Diamonds are Forever
by Dave
Summary: Jacen is on a scouting trip for his mother when he bumps into the woman of his dreams. She is tied up with a deeply entrenched crime ring, and not only does he have to rescue her from them, he has to save himself from the same fate.


Diamonds are Forever

by David Pontier

[dpontier@hotmail.com][1]

[ Homepage][2]

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Chapter 1

"Are you sure this environment doesn't clash inconveniently with the strict adherence to your religion?"

The environment was one of utter luxury. Music was played from different areas of the room and filled the majestic banquet hall with the gorgeous sounds of string, wind, and brass instruments. The walls were immaculate in their color, design, and function. The towering structure enclosing the enormous area seemed not to dwarf the inhabitants of the hall, but to draw them into a more intimate union with the architecture around them. The dazzling chandeliers spread light evenly throughout the hall, giving the people below the perfect atmosphere in which to mingle. The people were dressed in exquisite clothes, carrying an air about them that reeked of perfection, yet not one of them was over done. They talked to each other about sincere topics rather than the meaningless drivel that so often filled similar gatherings. They conducted themselves with utmost care in the handling of the food and wine that was distributed freely throughout the hall, not wanting to soil the perfection present in the room. It was a luxurious environment.

"Huh?"

The man cleared his throat with only a slight hint of annoyance. "Are you sure this environment doesn't clash inconveniently with the strict adherence to your religion?"

Jacen had heard him the first time, but had not followed his lofty speech, and instead of putting forth the extra effort involved with translating it, he had merely wanted it repeated, hoping for a looser expression the second time. Not getting one Jacen had to go with what he understood, which was about the last three words. "I don't know, Wiggy. I wouldn't really call it a religion."

Sten Wiggem sighed only slightly at Jacen's casual reference to his name, and then again at Jacen's obvious lack of attention to the original question. But like a good diplomat, he was flexible, and he could change gears for a little while as long as he could regain control of this precarious conversation. "Religion: a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code for the conduct of human affairs; a specific, fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects; the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices; or something a person believes in and follows devotedly."

Jacen took another sip of wine, inhibiting his ability to converse effectively even more than before, and leaned back in his chair slightly, considering this new bit of information. "I don't know," Jacen repeated, showing off his incredible vocabulary. "I don't think we have any ritualistic observances."

Wiggem was unwavering. "Regardless, sir," Wiggem flinched slightly at having to address this young man with such respect, "are you sure that you aren't contravening any of your Jedi beliefs right now?"

Jacen swallowed even more of the glorious liquid and leaned back a little further. "I don't know." Jacen thought back to what his uncle had told him. "Excitement, adventure, a Jedi craves not these things." "Hate, fear, aggression, these are of the Dark side." Jacen couldn't remember his uncle ever speaking out against gluttony or the idolatrous saturation of the senses. "I don't know. I hope not."

Wiggem, for the first time in his long life, gave up. "Indeed. If your curiosity is peeked about anything, anything at all, don't hesitate to bring it forth to my attention, and I will try to expound upon its meaning." Wiggem turned his attention away from his young guest and began to attempt to enjoy his evening.

If you have any questions just ask, Jacen thought to himself. Why didn't this guy just speak plain Basic? Jacen calmed himself by draining the rest of his glass and looking around the room again. Sure the guy was eccentric, but wasn't that the point. They should have named the planet Eccentrica instead of Estassia. Jacen, although he disliked the mission of sorts that his mother had sent him on to get a feel for the planet, agreed that this planet would be a great addition to the New Republic. He thought about his reason for being here and then about the relationship he had developed with Wiggem over the past two days. He wasn't worried that his attitude was jeopardizing the New Republic's chances of union with Estassia, he was just here to get a look around.

Leia knew that her son had a gift for understanding other living creatures. Though most people simply saw his ability with the Force through his odd collection of exotic animals, Leia understood that his understanding of life was not limited to the animal kingdom. He was there simply to get a feel for the people. Were they greedy? Were they timid or frightened? Did they value power more than morals? In general, would they make a good addition to the New Republic? After Jacen's report, Leia would better understand how she should proceed with the official negotiations, leaving her son and his carefree behavior as far away from the proceedings as possible.

Jacen smiled to himself at this last thought. He knew that Wiggem must think him a spoiled brat, and that petty baby-sitting was far below the old diplomat's abilities. If Jacen had simply acted artificially, then how would he be able to judge these people's true nature? He looked at Wiggem idly sitting in a chair opposite him at the table, slowly taking in his surroundings.

There was the buffet at which people filled their plates with exquisite food. There was a dance floor where a select crowd of people moved to the music. There were the musicians positioned around the room. And there were many other tables where people simply sat and enjoyed themselves. Jacen had never been to the Hapes cluster but he guessed that the perfection of people must be similar with one exception: these people were eccentric. They focused on one aspect of life, maybe two, and excelled at that and that alone. While they might be off balanced as individuals, as a whole, they were the most efficient people Jacen had ever run into. He knew that Wiggem was perhaps the most scholarly person in existence, but he knew that if he ever ventured onto the dance floor, he would probably be the most uncoordinated man in the whole hall.

The food was incredible and the music impossibly good, but Jacen had come to understand in his short time on this planet, that if the musicians attempted anything culinary other than perhaps the simple heating of water they would likely burn down the entire building, and any tune the chefs attempted would probably more closely resemble the screeching of a gundark than anything remotely musical. Jacen looked again at the positioning of the musicians around the room, noticing for the first time that they weren't haphazardly placed, but were in the most optimal places in the hall. Jacen closed his eyes and felt the moving of the music through the Force. It flowed majestically from the instruments and moved along the walls in graceful waves. The angles in the walls allowed for the full sound to be reflected toward the main area of the hall, drenching the crowd from every angle.

The idea of the society was simple. The architects, though maybe lacking in other skills, were the best architects in the galaxy. The mathematicians were likely to be less than adequately informed in the area of biology, but were indeed the best number-crunchers anywhere. There were many art pieces placed throughout the hall, and while it would be torture to watch one of those artists attempting any type of physical activity, they did produced the most incredible sculptures. And the women who concerned themselves with their looks, "are the most beautiful in the entire galaxy!" Jacen finished the thought out loud and slammed is chair back down to all fours as his eyes fell on a woman across the room.

Jacen's statement brought Wiggem to attention. He heard what Jacen had said and followed his intense gaze, wondering what could possibly so thoroughly capture the young Jedi's attention, since he had failed in even coming close to simply engaging it. He turned in his seat and saw that Jacen was looking toward some of the art pieces on exhibit. The older man's hormones were not on the same frequency as Jacen's, and he some how managed to look past the highly attractive woman wearing a tight fitting black dress and standing in front of a large sculpture. On later reflection Wiggem would realize that for Jacen to be this enthralled by a structure, know matter how well crafted, went against everything he had, up to this point, observed, but his specialty was literary knowledge, not deductive reasoning. "Ah," Wiggem said, happy to see that his young companion was an admirer of the arts, "you like what you see?"

Jacen didn't respond, and his eyes started to glaze over from the intensity of his stare and the alcohol level in his blood. He shook himself from the haze and allowed the Force to sober him somewhat. Wiggem was beginning to loose confidence in his original assumption that it was an art piece holding Jacen entranced. "Your keen observation is of the Hobr-" Wiggem started to say the artist's name, but realized Jacen would have no idea what he was saying, "is of the gray structure with the intricate, winding angles?"

Jacen rose from his seat with a smile on his face at Wiggem's inability to recognize true beauty. "No, Wiggs. I have my eye on the black one with the great curves." Jacen put a reassuring hand on Wiggem's shoulder. "But nice try."

The older man was still not quite sure what Jacen was talking about, but had a misguided idea that it had something to do with art. "Perhaps I shall join you. My knowledge on the subject is quite extensive. I am considered an expert, in all honesty."

At that moment Wiggem reminded Jacen of Threepio. May I remind you that I am fluent in over six million forms of communication. "I'm sure you are," Jacen said as much in response to Threepio's age old quote as to Wiggem's more recent statement, "but I think I can handle this one on my own."

Wiggem had tried to rise, but Jacen had kept his hand on his shoulder as he walked past him. Wiggem was amazed at the young man's strength that kept him in his chair. He began to wonder if there was something more to this visitor than he was originally told. He shrugged to himself as he watched Jacen skillfully weave himself around tables and avoid bodily contact.

Jacen tugged on the lapels of his eveningwear, confident in his neat suit and his father's inherited good looks. He realized he couldn't approach her empty handed. Using his tall frame in the mostly seated crowd, Jacen spotted a waiter carrying drinks. Instead of calling to the waiter, or making his way to him, Jacen simply beckoned with his hand and two drinks came floating towards him. Any other waiter would have gone into shock at the sight of two wineglasses leaving his tray via nothing. This waiter never faltered in his debonair stature and merely readjusted his tray to compensate for the lost weight, though his eyes did make flirtatious glances at the two anti-grav glasses, wondering if he had perhaps imbibed too much of his product.

Jacen caught the glasses and emerged from the dinning area unscathed. The woman had not left her position in front of the sculpture. Jacen let his eyes drink their fill from this safe distance so he wouldn't be tempted to do so during any potential conversation they might have. She stood straight and tall a meter or two from the velvet rope that separated the walkway from the exhibit area. Her black dress was narrow and long around her legs with a slit along the side running up to mid thigh. The middle was gathered around a very slim waist and followed her figure up into two thin straps over her bare shoulders. Her long blonde hair covered up the open back of the dress and Jacen could sense that she must have the deepest of blue eyes. He could also sense that she knew he was coming. He continued his approach, as she kept looking at the sculpture.

Jacen walked up next to her and suddenly felt very silly holding two drinks. She eased his discomfort by relieving him of one of them. She looked up at him and smiled. She had the most beautiful smile.

"Aren't you a little young to be a waiter?"

Jacen smiled and laughed a little. "Perhaps, and isn't it too crowded in here for you to be standing all alone?"

She laughed back. "Perhaps."

The two lapsed into silence. Jacen looked at the art piece in front of him. It was positioned far away from the velvet ropes and too far to make the plaque beneath it readable. Too far for the normal person anyway. "So what do you think of Hobrith's work?" Jacen asked.

The woman next to him flinched more than a little. "You are familiar with his art?"

"I've seen a few things. I find that most of his earlier works are still mostly misunderstood," Jacen said, practically reading the plaque word for word. "Though this sculpture is a good transition from his abstract work to his more contemporary pieces." The plaque ended, and so did Jacen, but he had said enough.

"And here I thought I would be spending my evening with a whole bunch of old stiffs," she said, fully warmed to Jacen and sipping her glass. "I think this piece is all about transition. If you look at the angles and how each member weaves back and forth searching for somewhere to go, it kind of gives the observer the idea that when their eyes are following the path they're reaching some sort of goal, but the actual destination ends up right where you started."

Jacen was beginning to get a feel for the sculpture himself. "Kind of like his reaction to the public's misinterpretation of his earlier works. They say, 'Take us somewhere with your work,' and so he gives them this: the illusion of travel. Isn't he really telling us that we will only see what we want to and that his more recent works will only seem to take us somewhere different, when they are actually the same as what he started with. I think the key to his more recent works still lies in the interpretation of his earlier ones." Jacen held his breath.

She exploded in laughter. "That is exactly right! They say with Hobrith's work the beauty is in the eyes of the beholder."

"Yes," Jacen quipped, "but rarely does the beholder have such beautiful eyes herself."

She turned to face him blushing slightly. "Who are you?" she asked inquisitively.

"Jacen Solo," Jacen replied, extending his right hand and glad that this far away from Coruscant his last name wouldn't be recognizable.

She took his hand in a surprisingly firm grasp. "Ariela Juwel," she responded with her introduction.

"What a beautiful name."

Ariela blushed again at the expected compliment. "Do I know you?"

"I don't think so," Jacen answered, "but we can change that if you like?" Ariela smiled at his direct boldness. She did have a gorgeous smile. Jacen nodded his head over to the dance floor. "Do you dance?"

Ariela was skeptical. "Do you?"

Jacen understood her doubt. Surely on this planet no man who knew this much about art, would be able to dance as well. "You'll find I'm full of surprises." He changed his grip on her hand and tugged gently on her fingers, leading her toward the main hall. "Shall we?"

She smiled again. "We shall." The pair made their way to the floor and wove their way through the aged group of dignitaries who were moving like prehistoric monsters, lumbering to and fro with respect to the young couple. Jacen led her to an open spot on the floor and they fell into the rhythm of the three-step waltz that the band was playing. Jacen used the Force to enhance is already graceful form. He was a trained fighter, and he found that he used the same type of footwork and motions when dancing as he did when fighting. He smiled thinking of one of the first jokes he told that had gotten a laugh from Tenel Ka. Fighting is a lot like ballet except the dancers are bigger and they hit each other. Despite Jacen's attempt to impress Ariela with his dancing ability, she stayed right with him, their toes never getting more than six centimeters apart throughout the waltz.

The two plowed their way though the older couples like a parade making its way through a crowd. People parted for them, realizing grace and beauty when they saw it. Jacen and Ariela stayed on the floor for the next two numbers, which were more like ballroom style dances. Jacen had been trained by his mother so he didn't make a fool of her at the state dinners the children had to attend, but he still didn't know most of the dances. With the Force he was able to slow everything down while he tried to learn the steps; he followed a half-second behind the first time through the motions and was then able to keep pace.

Ariela laughed in a verbal applause for his ability to learn and adapt, and was also glad to see that he wasn't perfect. When the next piece came, Jacen decided to lead and taught Ariela an old Alderaan dance. She learned just as quickly as he had, and they twirled around the floor like a couple of pros. The last song was a much slower song, and instead of the nervous tension that Jacen had expected, Ariela closed in on him, and the two moved together in a smooth slow dance.

At the end of the final song Ariela looked up into Jacen's eyes. "Thanks. I needed that. I was afraid I wouldn't have any fun at this thing."

Jacen was about to ask why she was here at all, but an unseen speaker system came to life and everyone in the hall quieted and came to attention. "Ladies and gentleman, may I please direct your attention to the north end of the hall for tonight's special presentation."

Jacen followed Ariela's gaze, uncertain of which end was the north, and saw a tall older man flanked by an elegant woman in a stunning gown. Jacen was continuously being surprised by how everyone fit their jobs so perfectly. His mother couldn't have looked more fit standing in front of the gathering than this couple did.

"Thank-you," the woman said to the unseen announcer. Her words rang out clear as a bell, but Jacen could detect no microphone on her of any kind. Once again Jacen was marveled by the architectural structure that provided such acoustics. "As you know we have all been invited here to witness the presentation of a new addition to this fabulous museum by the very generous Yerinthon family." She motioned her arms indicating a lower portion of the platform where a couple that was almost out of view stood. Jacen could barely catch a glimpse of them and could see why they weren't more visible. Apparently the Yerinthons had found their niche in this society was making money and giving expensive gifts to large museums and not participating in public appearances.

Jacen returned his gaze to the platform and noticed for the first time that there was a pedestal between the couple up on stage. It was covered with a silk sheet, and Jacen played with the idea of lifting the sheet prematurely with the Force, but thought better of it. "I don't know if I can adequately preempt the unveiling," the man said. "I guess the best way to express the museum's gratitude for this marvelous gift is by not holding you in suspense any longer. And so with out further promotion, I present you with the Necklace of Festivilla."

The sheet went up by an invisible thread and light immediately covered the jewelry. The hall was instantly full of ooh's and ahh's that were in no way exaggerated. Jacen craned his neck to see over the people in front of him, who had suddenly all seemed to grow another 10 centimeters. The necklace was made up of about 15 diamonds, decreasing in size as they worked their way toward the back of the neck, with the largest diamond, about the size of Jacen's thumb knuckle, front and center.

The crowd began a systematic cycle, in which they rotated in front of the display platform, giving everyone in the hall a chance to see the necklace up close. Jacen and Ariela waited patiently as they moved slowly in the sea of people until they stood before the display. The necklace was resting on a felt bust that was almost as attractive as the necklace itself. The necklace was covered in light, and it reflected a dazzling array of colors off the surrounding display stage. Everything was positioned exactly right.

Jacen and Ariela stood in front of the awed spectacle, simply staring. Ariela clung to Jacen's arm as if needing help to stay balanced in front of such a sparkling sight. She leaned her head against his shoulder and tilted her head upward to whisper in his ear. "Use that well trained art eye of yours, and tell me what you think."

Her voice sounded almost childlike. Maybe the wine and dancing had gotten to her. Yet through the melodic tone of her voice, there seemed to be an edge, as if this was his final challenge of the night before, . . . well, before whatever came next. Jacen stared at the necklace.

No one could stare too intently at it for long because the vast array of lights made even the sturdiest man dizzy. Jacen wasn't just anyone. He used the Force to stare past the lights, letting his eyes absorb the colors like a sponge. He might have winged it with the sculpture, but he was no slouch when it came to diamonds. He had tagged along with Lando plenty of times during his mining adventures and had been a quick learner. He had built several lightsabers and knew a powerful crystal when he saw one. Jacen's eyes began to focus into a new light, the light of the Force. He now saw energy. The light beams turned transparent and he looked into the core of the main diamond on the front and saw, . . . reflected light. Jacen closed his eyes hard and looked again. Reflected light. High quality diamonds reflect the light many times, before releasing it, seeming to create their own energy as they throb with power. This necklace in front of him did none of that. The light came in. The light went out. Sure the angles of the stone were such that the light was split into many different colors, but it was not real.

Jacen shook his head and stumbled back slightly as he shook the light from his head, blinking the splotches away. Ariela released his arm and looked at him curiously. He looked down at her. "It's glass. They're glass," he stammered.

"How did-" she stopped herself. "How can-" she stopped again. "Are you sure?"

"I just," Jacen stuttered, "I can tell."

The senior Yerinthon noticed the commotion in front of the display and walked slowly towards the pair. "Does there seem to be some sort of problem?" he asked.

Jacen looked around himself. The whole hall had seemed to grow quiet, knowing that something had gone wrong. Jacen was way out of his league, but he knew what he knew. "Sir, I believe that those diamonds are fake."

The people around Jacen that heard him speak began to laugh. "He's too young. What does he know?"

"Sir," Jacen said, staring straight into Yerinthon's eyes and trying hard not to use mental suggestion, "I strongly believe that you should examine those stones."

Something in Jacen's eyes told Yerinthon of the young man's sincerity, and he slowly nodded his head. "I will, son." The older man turned to look at the necklace, but the lights were coming in from all angles and he couldn't get a clear look at the piece of jewelry. "Will someone please get those blasted lights!"

Jacen waited for a few seconds, and realized that no one was near the switch. He reached out to the bulbs with the Force, followed the flow of positive charge back down the wire, and flipped the switches. The lights went out, and Yerinthon and a few other dignitaries crowded around the podium. In about five seconds one of them shouted, "It's glass." A shudder went through the hall. Those who had been laughing ceased such activity.

Jacen leaped gracefully up onto the meter tall platform and tried to work his way into the fray. "Sir," he managed to corner Yerinthon, "I believe I can help. How many exits are there in this building?"

"What are you saying? Do you believe that the thief is still in the building?"

"If they left right after the crime, why replace the necklace with a fake?" Jacen explained his reasoning.

Yerinthon motioned to a nearby security guard and spoke quickly to him. The guard relayed a message through a hand-held communicator and then turned to address the crowd. "Attention everyone," the big man's voice boomed, making the hall seem quite small. "I'm sorry for this little inconvenience, but we ask that none of you try to leave the building. Please just sit down at your tables and try to finish all of this food we have left."

Jacen turned his attention back to Yerinthon. "Sir, the thief isn't going to try and leave through the front door. Is there any other way out of this building?"

Yerinthon shook his head slowly. "All the windows are unbreakable, and I don't believe that there are any back-"

"The roof!" Jacen interrupted. "He's heading for the roof!"

"Ah, that could be a-"

"How do I get there?" Jacen asked, growing impatient with the old man and the lead the thief must be getting.

"It's a 20 story drop."

"Where do I find the stairs?"

"You've done plenty, young man. Security can handle it from here. I'll make sure that you are rewarded for your help."

Jacen finally gave into his temptation and used the Force. "Where are the stairs?" he asked with an eerie quality to his voice.

Yerinthon blinked at him at the oddity of the question, as if the answer was obvious. "Over there," he said, pointing to the west end of the hall, "behind the art exhibits."

Jacen turned to leave and found himself faced with the bulk of the crowd. He steadied his nerves and concentrated on the crowd. Suddenly people found themselves backing up unwillingly, opening an aisle for the Jedi to traverse. He threw his thanks to the confused people as he ran by. He emerged from the crowd in the art area and felt a tug on his arm. Jacen came up short, turning to see Wiggem standing there, looking quite confused.

"Excuse me sir, but could you illuminate me as to what is transpiring, why you are involved, and the identity of the person with whom you danced?"

Ariela! He had forgotten about her in the confusion. Where had she gone? Jacen looked back into the crowd with no luck at picking out the gorgeous blonde. "I'll tell you what Wiggly, I'll tell you all about it sometime, but right now could you find that girl. She's yea tall," he held his hand shoulder height, "blonde with a black dress. Tell her I'll be right back."

"But sir," Wiggem started as Jacen ran away from him.

"And stop calling me sir," Jacen threw back over his shoulder. He leapt over the rope border and made his way to a service door along the back wall. Through the door he stood on a small landing at the base of a stairway. Jacen paused at the base of the stairs and took a deep breath, slowing his pulse. Someone had been through here recently. They had been mad, or was it fear, or just plain adrenaline. He couldn't tell. The thief had a little bit of a lead, but Jacen could catch him. Jacen opened his eyes and leaped up the 12 steps in one jump. He pivoted 180 degrees and cleared the next flight. He made his way through the door at the top of the stairs and found himself in a small hallway.

Jacen paused again to get his bearings. His heightened senses picked up a slight whirring sound. He moved quickly to his left and found himself standing in front of an elevator. The transport had just stopped 15 floors up. Jacen was on the third floor. The thief had a 12-story lead, but probably wouldn't be expecting to be chased by a Jedi, if at all. Jacen couldn't wait for the elevator to come back down. A little further down the hallway, he found the stairs. He took each flight separately, one leap apiece, trying not to over exert himself and letting the Force do most of the work. In a little over half a minute he was at the fifteenth floor. He could sense the criminal about two, maybe three, stories up. He kept going. After two more flights he began hearing the telltale pounding of feet. When he turned the bend after the next flight, he saw a figure dressed in all black make the turn up the next flight.

"Hey!" Jacen yelled, not sure of what the thief had planned for whoever followed him. Jacen didn't get an immediate response, but when rounding the next turn, he saw a small flicker of motion in between him and the thief halfway up the stairs. With his reflexes controlled by the Force, his hand moved under its own power, grabbing at the air in front of his chest. Jacen opened his hand to find a small dart. "Not fair!"

The thief was at the top of the stairs now and Jacen eliminated the gap between them in one quick jump as he grabbed onto his adversary's ankle. The figure was wearing loose black pants, a black sweater, and a mask that covered his entire face, save his eyes. The thief pulled in a futile effort against Jacen's iron grip. "You're not going anywhere buddy."

The thief seemed to take a serious pause at Jacen's voice and looked back at him for the first time. Jacen relaxed a little and received a vicious foot to the head from the unsecured leg. He lost his grip and careened back down the stairs. He hit the landing below, falling hard on his shoulder blades. Jacen sat up slowly shaking the cobwebs from his head, cursing himself for his stupidity and lack of caution. All of his composure had been lost and he didn't have time to regain it. The thief was surely on the roof by now. He scampered up the rest of the stairs and then the next flight with a little caution.

The last door brought him onto the roof, and he was greeted unceremoniously with a metal pole aimed at his head. Jacen ducked, and the bar connected solidly with the door, slamming it closed. Jacen rolled a few yards away coming up facing his foe. The thief had a 150 cemtimeter metal pipe, which he held in the middle, and was slowly twirling it in front of his body. He had a pouch on his waist that Jacen assumed held the real necklace.

"I'll tell you what," Jacen started, trying to bargain, "You give me the necklace now, and I won't tell the police how easy it was for me to catch you." Jacen could imagine the smirk under the black mask, but didn't get a response. Jacen figured he would have to fight this adversary one way or another. He didn't have his lightsabers with him, and did a quick check around the roof for some type of weapon. He knew the thief hadn't been carrying that pipe when he was in the stairway. Jacen turned back to the man in black to see what type of pipe it was, when he caught the end of a quick wrist motion. Jacen focused all of his attention on the dart as it flew toward his face. With the Force the dart seemed to slow down and creep toward him. His right hand came up smoothly and batted the projectile away only centimeters from his face.

Jacen readjusted is eyes to his surroundings and found that his opponent had followed his shot and was only a meter away. With no weapon, Jacen brought his fore arms up to block the blows. They came quick and furious. Jacen moved smoothly, blocking the hits with glancing thrusts, trying to redirect the weapon, rather than absorb the full brunt of the blows. The attacks didn't have much strength behind them, but they were so quick that Jacen started to feel the welts growing on his arms. He back peddled furiously, trying to keep himself out of the weapon's way. The swipes came just in front of his chest, nipping the lapels of his coat. Jacen couldn't help thinking of earlier that evening. Fighting was a lot like dancing: each person takes turns leading, they move in smooth, fluid motions, and if you don't do it right you could end up quite sore.

Jacen stopped his retreat when he felt himself come up against the edge of the roof. He measured the timing of the attacks and slipped in between them, getting inside of the weapon's range. Jacen delivered two quick chops to his foe's wrists on known pressure points. The metal pipe clanged to the roof and Jacen continued his charge by bowling the thief off his feet. Jacen's opponent was quick and somersaulted backwards coming up a few meters away. The two combatants tensed for a few seconds, before the thief turned and ran. Jacen followed with two quick steps before he realized the feint. He came up short as the black figure in front of him leaped straight into the air, executed a perfect half twist, and lashed out with his left leg.

Jacen tried to brace himself with the edge of the roof just to his right, but his sudden stop left him off balanced, and although he got his arms up to block the kick, he careened precariously on the edge of the roof. The thief landed, executed another spinning kick, and Jacen went over the edge. The Jedi twisted himself in mid air and caught on to the edge of the roof. He hung there briefly and watched has the black clad fighter checked to see if Jacen had survived. Jacen thought that the thief would try to crush his fingers, but he just turned and ran.

Jacen didn't fool around on the edge of the building for long, filling himself with the Force and launching his body back onto the roof. The black figure was running toward the far corner and had already gotten his repelling cord out. Jacen calmed himself, not letting the anger of his earlier carelessness get a hold of him. He glanced at the small building in the middle of the roof, from which the door had opened. Where were the security guards? He turned back toward his fleeing foe, who was now halfway across the roof. With a motion of his hand Jacen sent a wave of the Force toward his legs. The thief went sprawling, his rope skittering out ahead of him.

The black figure looked curiously at his legs, expecting to see his metal pipe tangled about his feet. Seeing nothing, he looked up at Jacen with confusion concealed behind the mask. "No more games now buddy," Jacen said as he walked up to the thief. He tried to scramble back to his feet, but Jacen knocked him down again with a wave of his hand. The thief was now near the small building in the middle of the roof and he rose into a cautious crouch, expecting another wave of the unknown power. He found an old brick under his hand and hurled it at Jacen. Jacen waved it away like swatting a fly. The thief tried a desperate charge, but Jacen held up his right hand and the black clad figure stumbled backwards into the wall. He tried to get away from the wall, but Jacen walked up quickly and placed his hand on the thief's chest, pinning the shorter opponent against the wall at arm's length.

The thief struggled against Jacen's arm, and Jacen could hear his heavy breathing from exhaustion. He could feel the thief's chest rising and falling under his hand. He paused. That wasn't the only thing he could feel under his hand. He looked at the thief's figure under the now taunt black sweater, realizing for the first time the true gender of his opponent. Jacen looked hard at the mask of his foe for the first time and found himself staring into the deepest blue eyes he had ever seen. Well, the deepest he had seen since earlier that night. "Ariela?"

"You'll find I'm full of surprises too," she said, and with her identity and gender known, she decided to make Jacen's gender more obvious with a swift kick in between is wide stance.

Jacen was in total shock at this new revelation, and was in no position to even attempt to block the kick that landed on him solidly. His entire body buckled in pain, and was a sitting duck for the next two kicks that Ariela delivered into his chest and head. He fell to the roof, landing hard. He tried to get up and received a vicious kick to the head. "Don't ever touch me again without my permission," she said as she delivered the kick.

Jacen's mind was clouding over fast. He concentrated hard trying to keep himself conscious. The fog started to slowly clear, and he looked up to see Ariela at the corner of the roof. He reached out to try and stop her and received a dart in his neck. His hand came up to inspect the foreign object and another dart slammed into his chest. Jacen felt the poison go to work immediately and knew he was in no condition to fight against it. He managed to flip over onto his back before passing out.

****

Chapter 2

The bright sun was hastily warming the mid morning sky over the city of Rencrin. The crystal blue sky had but a few puffy white clouds to dot the scenery, with a few birds flying beneath them in perfect formation. The air was crisp, and a steady drumbeat sounded as if it thought all nature should march to it. Indeed the beat was solid enough and steady enough, but only a few musicians decided to step to the rhythm for now.

Jacen looked down on the parade from his fifth floor hotel window. The balcony was large and luxurious. He reclined in the soft chair as his untouched breakfast steamed away on the table before him. Images of last night kept dancing through his mind and he couldn't get them to change tracks to that of the food in front of him.

The sound of a door opening and closing from inside Jacen's room let him know that Wiggem had come to give the day's itinerary. Little did the old man know that Jacen had other ideas. "Well, Jacen," Jacen knew he was in trouble when Wiggem used his name rather than sir, "shall we see if today we can't keep a profile that is a little further from the front page."

"There's no picture, and it doesn't mention me specifically," Jacen said in his defense, having already seen the paper in question.

"'. . .after the cries of fake came from a young man in attendance, the necklace was examined by the Honorable Yerinthon and found to be just that. Though chase was given, the thief was not apprehended.'"

"See," Jacen said as he leaned toward the table and began to stir his eggs around, "doesn't even imply me." Jacen tried a few of the eggs from bird unknown and found them, to his utter lack of surprise, to be excellent. His mind went back to last night. The darts had worn off quickly, and he had been fully conscious when the security team finally arrived. He had lied to them about catching up with the thief and said that HE was gone before Jacen had arrived on the roof. They questioned him little and as per his request, left his name out of the official report.

Jacen was glad he was incognito. Wiggem had asked few questions. In the first two days he hadn't even ventured to ask about the two lightsaber handles dangling ever from Jacen's waist. Apparently he didn't know what they were and didn't care to find out. He also never asked why Jacen always wore a long green robe. Wiggem seemed to know Jacen was a Jedi, but what that meant today was different from the history books that Jacen was sure Wiggem had studied. Wiggem simply knew that he was the son of the head of state of an ally of Estassia, and he was here to see the sights. But right now there was only one sight he cared to see.

"Today, after the parade, I thought we might venture on to view the splendid sights of-"

"Tell you what Wiggums," Jacen interrupted, "I'd like to guess that there isn't a thing on that itinerary that would help tell me what I came here to find out, not anymore than I already have discovered, that is."

Wiggem stopped his reading, disturbed about being so abruptly interrupted. He stared with mock interest at his young companion. "What do you suggest?" he dared to ask.

"I suggest," Jacen said, mimicking Wiggem's voice, "a bet."

"A bet, sir?"

"I'm not speaking your language, am I? A wager of sorts, where two people predict the outcome of an event for the potential betterment of themselves at the cost of the other. If I win I get what I want, if you win you get what you want. Understand?"

"What is it, exactly, that you want?"

"I want simply to walk the streets of this city and see all the people in their natural environment."

"But sir," Wiggem pleaded in a sincere voice, "there are parts of this city that aren't clean and are quite dangerous."

"I'm counting on it," Jacen replied expecting the objection. "If I keep going with you to big dinners, fancy museums, expensive concerts, and the like, I only get to see the upper echelon of your society. What about those people?" he asked pointing down to the street far below. "They make up over seventy-five percent of your population and they can't all possibly hold the same views as the upper class. Those people down there define your society. All of you guys in your expensive suits and fancy dresses hide behind their glitter and glow, not letting you true self show through."

Wiggem was a professional diplomat and mediator and could debate with the best of them. "You sit there and criticize the very class of people to which you belong. You're the son of the head of your government. You came in a very expensive ship. You wear nice clothes," Wiggem paused examining Jacen's present attire, and added, "when you desire to do so. To epitomize your hypocrisy you are staying in the Fringthrop Hotel, the best of the best."

"Very good, Wiggem," Jacen congratulated the man, using his real name for the first time in a day and a half. Arguing was just like dancing and fighting, there were steps you needed to follow. "This trip was not my idea, nor was the family I was born into, yet I wouldn't trade it for anything - the family, I mean. I would not have chosen this hotel, and surely you know that my government is a republic, a representative democracy. I'm not in line for the throne or anything like that, and I have no intention of trying to get it. I would much rather lead a simple life like those people on the street." Wiggem didn't know about the life a Jedi led, or he might better be able argue Jacen's points.

"I will not go with you into the streets, they can be hostile."

"I had intended to go alone."

"What about this bet of which you speak?"

Jacen motioned with his hand. Wiggem, who was still standing in the main room, tossed the itinerary onto the bed and ventured out onto the balcony. "Come here and look down. Don't worry," Jacen said in response to the man's uncomfortableness with the extreme height, "the ground isn't going to jump up and get you and this balcony seems pretty sturdy." The hotel was situated on the corner of a city block and Jacen's room was in the same corner of the building. He pointed across the street to which the parade ran perpendicular. "Do you see that small park over there?" Wiggem nodded mutely. The park was a small area with a few trees and a pleasant brook running through the middle of it. "I'm going to jump into that park from here." Wiggem began to protest, but Jacen held up his hand causing the words to physically get caught in the older man's throat. "If I land safely, I will simply stay down there and wander around for the day. If not, then you can go down there, scrape me off the sidewalk, and cart me around the city on your little tour." Jacen motioned to the itinerary back in the room.

"Sir, I hardly think that this is the time or place to be pulling stunts of this nature. Why don't you accompany me back ins-" was as far as he got when Jacen launched himself from the balcony. "Oh, dear," Wiggem said, but his distress turned to awe as he watched the young Jedi float 15 meters away, 20 meters down, and into a grove of trees. A few seconds after Jacen had disappeared into the foliage, he emerged from the grove on the ground and waved back up to Wiggem. Not quite sure what had just happened, Wiggem waived humbly back.

***

The streets were crowded with people as they lined the parade route. Jacen took a constant survey of the crowd. There were no unsavory types in this crowd save maybe a few pickpockets. The fear that Wiggem had shown seemed thoroughly misplaced, as Jacen watched the crowd. Jacen also knew that the whole city wasn't like this, and it was likely that there were sections that closely matched those lower portions of Coruscant. It was socially impossible to have as large an upper class as this society had without having a lower class to step on.

Jacen decided that the best way to find who he was looking for was to just find a nice spot, watch the throng of people, and wait.

***

Ariela stopped at an intersection, pulled a piece of paper from the inner pocket of her vest, checked the address written there, rechecked the street sign, and continued walking. The air cars in the street whisked by her, hovering a couple dozen centimeters off the ground and traveling at incredibly unsafe speeds. She tried to walk comfortably on the relatively empty sidewalk. She wasn't used to being outside in the city during the day, and she had to do a bit of thinking about what she should wear. She had settled on a black vest over a long-sleeved blue shirt, to ward off the cool morning breeze and a pair of black pants that covered the tops of her boots. Her walk was still unnatural as she kept throwing glances over her shoulder, fearful that she was being followed.

Ariela tried to put herself at ease by thinking of where she was going. Was she crazy? What was she going to say when she got there? "Hi, remember me? I 'm really sorry about everything, but I didn't have a choice. I'm sure you understand." She shook her head. She was crazy. This was not going to work.

Up ahead, Ariela started to hear a parade in progress. She would feel more comfortable in the crowd she was sure. "Excuse me miss," a voice came from the shadows of an alleyway she was passing, "could you spare something for a poor beggar." Ariela looked into the alley to see a man hunched over in a green blanket. "Any amount of money would be appreciated. Just some small amount of change would help." Ariela began to quicken her pace. "Or perhaps a diamond necklace would come in handy."

Ariela came up short, nearly falling forward. She spun on the man in the shadows, as he stood tall from his crouch, revealing his identity. "What are you doing here?" she asked trying not to sound as excited as she really was. She walked tentatively into the alley.

Jacen shrugged. "I came to get permission."

"Perm-" she started, but then remembered what she had said up on the roof. Jacen chuckled to himself at her visible discomfort and walked deeper into the alley. Ariela quickly struggled to get the upper hand. "I'm glad to see you can still walk properly."

Jacen winced at her obvious reference to the kick she had laid on him. "I'll live," he responded. Jacen stopped walking and leaned casually against one of the sidewalls enclosing the dead end. "And how is your chest?"

Ariela paced to a short distance away from the Jedi, still not sure of his intentions but confident that she could battle vocally with him. "Being touched by you is not as exciting as you might like to think."

"I guess that depends on your point of view," Jacen responded with a sly grin. "Well I'd like to let you know that being kicked in the groin is no pleasure ride either," he said with mocked seriousness.

It was Ariela's turn to smile. "I guess that depends on your point of view; I enjoyed it."

"You would."

"I'm sure you'll find that many of the truths you cling to depend greatly on your own point of view." The two lapsed into silence. "You still didn't tell me what you're doing here, and don't give me that permission line because you're just as likely to get that as you are the diamonds."

"You just answered your own question," Jacen told her. "Where are they?"

Ariela was slightly taken aback. "Don't tell me that you're some kind of undercover cop, because I won't believe you."

Jacen pushed himself away from the wall and held his hands wide in an innocent gesture. "What can I say," he pleaded, "I am a man that seeks justice, and I won't be able to put my conscious at rest until you are safely behind bars and the necklace is returned."

Ariela looked at him intently trying to figure out his odd style. "So you're just going to arrest me?" she asked, not believing for a moment that he would.

"What choice do you leave me with?"

"What if I killed you right here and walked away?" she asked, throwing her own bluff out onto the table. Jacen shrugged. "You don't believe me do you?"

"You don't believe me, why should I believe you. I've seen your battle prowess, and I don't think that I'm wrong in believing that I could take you quietly."

Ariela thought back to that fight, recalling the odd ending. Something had tripped her at the end of the battle, something she couldn't seem to understand. She looked at the man across the alley from her, wondering what kind of secrets he held underneath that green cloak. "Okay," she said, conceding this little battle of words, "so why don't you just arrest me?"

Jacen nodded at the fair question and began pacing along a short line. "Let's say I wanted to have a little question and answer session first." Jacen paused, looking at the ground, apparently trying to compose his first question. Ariela waited, curious as to what he was up to. "Why?" he finally said, and though he had been through extensive Jedi training and had much better control of his feelings than the average person, he couldn't remove all of the hurt from his voice.

Ariela looked at him, and Jacen had to return his gaze to the ground. She knew what was going through his mind and it pained her. "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" was the common phrase. He was an honest person. A good and upright person, she could see that. But what could she tell him? The truth? The truth had penalties that went along with its knowledge, expensive penalties. He couldn't understand, could he? Who was he? She couldn't drag him into her mess; it just wouldn't be fair. Ariela tried to speak but found her words wouldn't come. What was she going to say?

"Excuse me, Miss Juwel, is this man bothering you?" The voice spun her around and cleared her mind of the dilemma. A man with a medium length pipe was slowly smacking his hand with it in a casual manner that promised coordination with the crude weapon. Two more men were behind him. "Because if he's bothering you, we can bother him for a while."

Ariela spun back around toward Jacen who was a little confused and found that two more men had some how snuck into the back of the alley and were creeping up from behind him. She had been right to worry about being followed. Jacen found his voice first. "You know these thugs?" he asked incredulously.

Ariela flinched at his choice of words, thinking he might be in over his head and didn't need to make things worse by getting the visitors angry at him. This was her fault. If she hadn't come down to this part of the city, she wouldn't have been followed, and Jacen wouldn't be in trouble. "I'm sorry, Jacen," was all she could manage.

Jacen saw more than she could know. He was a very good judge of character, and he had immediately seen that she was a good person. That was why he had been so shocked on the roof. Now he understood. She was involved in something big, bigger than she was. He could see that she wanted to get out. "You can tell me," he said. "I can get you away from this. You have to trust me."

"I . . .I can't-"

"Enough talk," the man who had spoken earlier said as he grabbed Ariela's arm roughly and yanked her behind him. "You run home now little girl, we will handle this now. You won't have to worry about him anymore."

Jacen watched as one of the three thugs in front of him dragged her out of the alley. He saw her mouth "I'm sorry" one last time before she disappeared from sight. He returned his gaze to his present situation and saw the big man with the pipe smiling at him. "Now if you promise not to go anywhere near her ever again, we'll let you go."

Jacen looked at the man, wondering if he actually thought the Jedi was that stupid. "We are men of action. Lies do not become us."

The head guy shrugged, nodding his head at Jacen's competence. "Let's dance."

Jacen just couldn't seem to escape this parallel, but as the thug behind the chief charged, Jacen thought that it looked like anything but dancing. Jacen knew about the two guys behind him, and also knew that the charge from in front was just a feint as the real attack came from behind. Timing his jump just right, Jacen flew upwards and backwards as the two men behind him converged. Storm troopers would have all kept running and collided in a threesome, forming an uncoordinated pile, but these trained men avoided contact and turned to face their evasive foe.

"Okay, what do you guys specialize in," he asked, wondering how a specialized society like this one could produce street fighters.

"We hurt people," said one of the men who had been behind him. He was brandishing a wicked knife and he charged a second time. Jacen thought for a moment about bringing out his lightsabers, but decided against it. He didn't need to kill them, and they might recognize the weapon as belonging to a Jedi, and then he would be in big trouble. When the man closed in, Jacen lashed out with right leg toward the man's wrist. The knife bearer was quick and stopped short, letting Jacen's leg sweep by in front of him. Jacen rotated his body with the momentum of his kick, landed on his right leg, and completed the 360 spin by kicking out with his left. This second blow caught the thug square in the jaw, and he went down hard.

Jacen was facing forward again and the other two men, one holding a chain and the other some sort of long, slender hammer, began to slowly flank him. "What did you guys do, rob a mech-tech store? Don't you guys have blasters on this planet?"

"We have orders not to kill you," the chief responded.

"Remind me to thank your employer."

The man on the right with the chain was not one for talk and he attacked. He had held his weapon well, concealing its true length, and Jacen had to put his arm up to block the long range attack. The chain wrapped tightly around his forearm, and Jacen flinched as the last link smacked his forearm that was still sore from last night. Jacen grabbed on the chain with his right hand and pulled hard. The man on the other end of the metal rope trusted in his 100 kilogram frame to win the tug of war, not counting on the amount of strength the Force afforded his slighter opponent. The man flew through the air and smacked into the opposite wall. Jacen let go of the chain and unwrapped the weapon from his arm with the Force so he did not follow the dead weight on its flight path.

The last two men attacked at once. Jacen recognized that his main threat was from the chief. With a motion of his hand, he sent a Force wave into the man from the side. The wave hit him full in the chest and he went sprawling, down but not out. The chief saw this unusual attack and his first swing faltered slightly, allowing Jacen the ability to catch the crude weapon. The big opponent recovered quickly from his initial shock and ripped the pipe away from Jacen, before the Jedi could do likewise.

The two circled slowly as Jacen looked around for a weapon. The alley was very clean. The Force wave only worked well on people who weren't ready for it and the man opposite him was poised for anything. Jacen could easily run from this opponent, but he knew that he had to finish this fight. If he ran, then he would loose the respect of his enemy, which usually resulted in getting shot in the back. If he was a coward, then they wouldn't waste precious time on him. If they respected him, they would treat him as such, usually.

The big man swung again. Jacen jumped to the side, and the blunt weapon just missed crushing his head. As the man with the hammer was getting up, Jacen realized that he was running out of time. He dodged another swipe right and was then forced to roll back to his left as the head of the second man's hammer moved on a trajectory with his own.

When Jacen came out of his roll he had one of his lightsabers in his hand. He didn't ignite it and hoped the presence of the unknown object would confuse his enemy. The man with the hammer dropped his guard, regarding the new device for a fatal second. Jacen lashed out with his foot and connected solidly with the handle of the hammer. The top of the heavy weapon shot back and hit the man in the head, knocking him out. The chief was less startled and swung his pipe out at Jacen's vulnerable leg. The Jedi flipped back wards over the swipe.

The two men closed in on each other again. "Does it do anything, or do you just hold it for security?" the big man scorned. He swung at Jacen's midsection, and Jacen ignited the weapon to its one-meter length and intercepted the attack with a textbook parry, the blade perpendicular to the ground. Jacen pulled up hard against the pipe, forcing the shorter but heavier weapon out wide.

The chief stumbled back under Jacen's strength. Jacen had the clear advantage now and his adversary had to know it. Jacen's battle stance spoke volumes of his prowess. His weapon was a full 30 centimeters longer than the pipe and had obvious advantages over the cumbersome weapon. The thug also realized that Jacen was not the simple young punk that the chief had originally thought. Despite the obvious state of affairs the thug would not retreat and charged his opponent.

Jacen wished to end this fight now. He swung his weapon above his head and brought it down in a vicious strike. The charging man drew up short and put his pathetic excuse for a weapon up for a perpendicular block. The glowing sword cut through the crude pipe and sliced through the air centimeters in front of the startled thug, nipping him on his protruding gut. Jacen didn't let the man sort things out as he stood there with his now 20-centimeter-long piece of smoldering pipe. The Jedi lashed out with a kick to the head, then another, then another, finally finishing the barrage with a spinning blow to the head that sent the large man into a very uncomfortable slumber.

***

Ariela was being led by a much smaller man than those who had stayed back in the alley. "You shouldn't have snuck out this morning. Where did you think you were going to go, huh? Were you going to go whoring with that young man back there? What did you call him? Jacen? You should know better than that by now. I'm surprised that they even put up with you anym-"

Ariela gripped the arm that held her, stopped short and twisted the appendage behind the thug's back until he shrieked in pain and released her. She swept the startled man's feet out from under him, and as he fell, she clipped him in the head with her elbow, sending him into blackness.

Ariela took off running, not wanting to go back to the alley. She turned a corner at the end of the block and ran head on into a permacrete wall. She stumbled backward but the permacrete wall reached down with his arms and steadied her. "Where are you going in such a hurry?" Ariela looked up at the wall's face, way up. The man stood a full 30 centimeters past two meters and half again as wide. Ariela slumped in defeat. There were no tricks she could play on this man, no maneuvers that would move, much less hurt him. Any tart remarks would result in severe pain. "That's what I thought," the huge man said dryly. "You were coming back home weren't you?" Silence. "Weren't you?"

This last question was accompanied by a sharp twist that forced Ariela to hop in an effort to keep her arm attached. "Yes, Borgan," she said meekly.

"This little escapade into the city is over now, isn't it?" Ariela nodded mutely. "Isn't it?"

The vise grip tightened on her arm causing her fingers to tingle from loss of blood. "Yes," she squeaked.

"Who is this new man?"

Ariela sighed. "His name is Jacen."

"Jacen who?"

"I don't know." A slight twist. "I don't know!" she dared to lie again and hit Borgan's hand to try and make it believable. "I met him last night at the museum. Apparently he wanted more than he got last night."

"How much did he get last night?"

"Borgan!" Ariela dared to yell at him.

"Were you going to sleep with him?"

"I most certainly was not! He is just some hormone-crazed boy in over his head. He's harmless. You don't need to worry about him."

"I think I'll decide who I need to worry about and who I don't need to worry about. But I agree with you. Herink should have handled him just fine." Ariela concealed her hope. Jacen had proven to be a very capable fighter on the roof, and he had this unexplainable air about him that spoke of unknown power.

"What do we have here?" Borgan asked as he reached inside Ariela's vest. Ariela braced herself, suspecting his lewd intentions. She was powerless to stop him, but she relaxed when all he did was remove a slip of paper from her inner pocket.

"It's where I was going," Ariela said quickly, telling the truth.

"The Fringthrop Hotel," Borgan read, "located at the intersection of seventeenth and Swingly Lane, room 513. What is this?"

"It's a very ritzy hotel in the middle of the business district."

"I know what the hotel is. I've stayed there myself. I want to know why you have the address in your vest and who is staying in room 513."

"The place is full of expensive art. I thought it might be good job to pull in the future. There is very easy access to the building and not very tight security."

"Why do you have a room number?"

"When I called for information on the place I pretended that I wanted to make a room reservation. I wrote down the room number so I would remember what I had said over the phone." Ariela was making it up as she went and hoped for no more questions.

Borgan lifted her head by her chin so that she could look him straight in the face. "I believe you," he said and both of them knew it was a lie. "But next time tell me ahead of time and don't sneak off, and I won't have to send Herink out after you. Understand?"

Ariela nodded slowly, realizing that she should feel lucky to get off this easily. A transport pulled up to the curb next to them and the door slid open. The car was very large and Ariela obeyed an arm gesture by Borgan and entered the back of the vehicle. Borgan began to maneuver his incredible bulk into the car when a shout from outside stopped him.

"Wait! Wait for me!" The man who Ariela had knocked down was running down the sidewalk toward the air car. Blood was caked on his upper lip where his nose had placed it.

Borgan tried to stay amused as the small man ran up to him, not wanting to be left behind. "What happened Geoff? Did you trip?" Borgan knew full well what had happened. He had watched it minutes before.

"Uh, yes sir. I tripped," Geoff said, knowing it was wise not to create tension between himself and Ariela. If Borgan ever had to choose between them, Geoff knew that he would be out of a job, and in his line of work that would also mean he would be out of a life.

"Where is Herink and the others?"

"I don't know sir? I left them back with," he hesitated looking into the car at Ariela, "the target. They should be done by now."

Ariela showed no reaction, hoping against hope that Jacen had beaten the odds. If he had come to serious harm, she didn't know how she would be able to deal with it. The last man she had met had found his way into the obituaries the next day. As Geoff climbed into the back of the car, sitting as far from Ariela as possible, Borgan pulled out a communicator.

"Herink," the big man paused listening to a voice only he could hear. "Herink? Who is this? Where is Herink?" Ariela watched as Borgan almost crushed the communicator in his hand. "Very well. I want a full report when you get back. Pray that I don't think it was your fault."

Borgan got into the car, closed the door, and the vehicle took off down the street. The giant didn't look directly at Ariela, and she was glad. She wasn't sure if she would have been able to keep the smile off her face, and now would be a very bad time to boast.

***

Jacen watched from the rooftop as the four men woke up. None of them were seriously hurt as they stumbled about trying to remember the shoe size of the boot that had hit them. Jacen followed them for two blocks before they piled into a car and sped off much faster than he could travel. It was almost noon, and he knew that he wouldn't see Ariela again today, or possibly ever again. He wished he could do something about it, but there were just so many things he could and couldn't do.

Jacen had to remind himself that he was here to do a job for his mom, and he was only scheduled to stay two more days after this one. He was sure he could extend his stay if he wanted to. He had flown here himself, and controlled the time he would leave. If he couldn't find Ariela in the next two days, he would probably leave. It looked to him like she was involved in some small time thief's guild; she wanted to leave, but feared the consequences. If there wasn't anyone higher up the chain than the guy with the pipe, Jacen didn't think she was in too much trouble, but still . . .

Jacen made his way back down to the street and wandered around for the rest of the day, giving himself his own tour without Wiggem's constant dissertations. By the end of the afternoon he had almost forgotten about the whole mess in the morning. Whether he ever saw Ariela again, he was pretty sure her gang would leave him alone now. He couldn't have been more wrong.

****

Chapter 3

The room was dry, unbearably so. Borgan moved his frame through the doorway into the large room. The room itself was large but the myriad computers and electronic components crowding the space decreased the useful area of the room to a small, centralized portion. Borgan moved into the middle of this area as the door automatically slid shut behind him. He turned and faced the back of the room where a small path between computer terminals and storage bins snaked up to an elevated platform on which a table and chair resided. The high back of the chair prevented Borgan from seeing if anyone was occupying it, as it was turned toward the table and away from him. Borgan waited patiently, knowing that if the man he wished to speak with was there, he knew that Borgan was waiting. There were few people who had the nerve to let the giant wait and fewer still for whom the giant would then actually wait. This was the only man.

"I understand that we had a small altercation in town today," the chair said without turning around.

"Yes, it is taken care of. Ariela ran off to meet with a young man." Borgan showed no discomfort at talking to the back of the chair.

The chair spun around revealing a slight old man holding an electro-stabilizer and solder rod. There was a curious expression on his face. "Does she admit to this?"

"No, she denies it vehemently."

"Ah," the man said as he spun back around to the table and continued working, "the most conclusive evidence you can have. I assume that you have found this unlucky boy and have removed him from Ariela's life."

"That is why I'm here."

The man spun around again, this time with his hands empty and looked inquisitively at the huge man who stood before him. The older man rose slowly from the chair. To anyone who didn't know the man, they would say that his slow movements were due to his age. If they thought this, they would be underestimating the most powerful man on the planet. His motions were slow and solid. They didn't have to be such, but the man was seldom in a hurry and felt no need for careless haste. "This boy is still at large." It was more a statement than a question.

"The man bested four of my men." Neither of the men in the room missed Borgan's slight correction. The older man had been referring to Jacen as a boy. Borgan was simply telling his superior that he considered this man to be more of an inconvenience than the usual boy who crossed Ariela's path. "He is definitely a formidable foe."

The older man sat back down, still facing Borgan, and frowned slightly. "You have lost confidence in our strength. Do you really believe that this young man can cause us trouble?"

"I do not believe he can cause us any harm directly, but I fear his presence might negatively influence Ariela. If we allow him to live, it might instill a flicker of hope in the young woman. She is disobedient enough as it is, and we don't need to give her any extra motivation. Plus, this man seems to be battle worthy. Such a man could attempt a rescue, and, while such an attempt will be easily crushed, it would draw unneeded attention to us."

"Why have you considered anything other than elimination for this unfortunate soul? Isn't our policy the same with everyone? If someone is in the way, remove him. Why did you bother me with this?"

Borgan cleared his throat, showing no signs of discomfort at what some might have thought a rebuke. "In all other cases, we have intercepted and eliminated. In this case he eluded our first attempt. He is now wary, and we must go to him. Although I expect no complications, I simply wanted to alert you to the change in methods so that if anything did go wrong, you would have previous knowledge."

The older man considered this and nodded. "Thank-you, Borgan. You were correct in bringing this to my attention. You may go now. As always, I'll leave the details in your capable hands." He spun back around to continue his work on the table.

Borgan nodded in respect. "As you wish, Father."

***

The sound of stone on steel rang out like music. The man stroked the fine blade lovingly across the specially treated stone as a musician would play a stringed instrument or as a lover would caress his mate. He stopped and examined the edge of the wicked weapon as it glowed in the bright light of the room.

A chime at the door interrupted his examination. "Enter." The man turned in his sitting position to see Borgan's wide bulk fill the passageway. The smaller man quickly rose out of respect and held the knife as unthreateningly as possible. "Yes," he stumbled on the word.

"I have a job for you, Ethanz." The smaller man's eyes brightened visibly. Borgan reached into his pocket and removed the slip of paper he had taken from Ariela. "I want every member of this room dead by tomorrow morning."

Ethanz snatched the piece of paper out of the giant's hand like an eager child receiving money. "Any special requests?"

"I would like you to consider him the most dangerous assignment you have ever had. He likely will be. You will cut no corners. I doubt I will be able to stop you from having your fun, but I want you to keep in mind the price of failure." Borgan didn't need to elaborate. "Accidental death, natural causes, suicide, I'll leave it up to you. I don't expect there to be more than one person in the room, but if there are more than one, kill them all. In particular, your target is a young man, mid twenties, tall, with brown hair, and a muscular build."

"What has he done?"

Borgan's eyes could have melted steel. "That is none of your concern and never will be. You kill; I pay. That is all you'll ever need to know." With that the large man spun on his feet and left the room, allowing Ethanz to concoct some evil plan.

***

Jacen collapsed on his bed. He looked at his clock and saw the reason for his hunger and exhaustion. It was late and he hadn't eaten since breakfast. He had spent the entire day walking through the crowded city enjoying the festivities after the parade. He hadn't bothered to find the meaning behind the celebration; he simply participated. He got up slowly and painfully. Sitting on the edge of the bed he tried to locate the source of his pain. His whole back was sore and his legs were stiff from walking. During the fight in the morning, he must have pulled a muscle and not noticed until now.

Jacen took a deep breath, calming himself as he tried to start a healing trance. He struggled for several minutes to get control of his wandering thoughts but to no avail. During the day he had managed to not think of Ariela, but now that he was isolated from distractions, he couldn't remove her pretty face from his mind. He kept seeing her mouth the words "I'm sorry" over and over again. What did he see in her eyes? There was something there. Beyond the true concern that she was showing for his well being, she was conveying her regret for unknown terror. Getting beat up by a couple thugs was a bad thing, but her eyes seemed to promise something more.

Jacen tried to shrug off these feelings, but his stomach, legs, and back were still crying out to him. Concentrate, he scolded himself. You're a Jedi, for crying out loud, get a grip. A few more minutes of struggle proved fruitless and he collapsed backwards on his bed again. Staring up, he watched the ceiling fan as it twirled round with an almost imperceptible hum. The solid wood blades were lined in gold trim and sparkled, as the fan seemed to mesh into one semi-transparent disk.

Jacen sighed audibly, this was a great hotel. He sat upright. This was a first class luxury hotel. They had to have extensive room service. He moved over to the end table by the head of the bed. There was a list of services, and Jacen nearly drooled as he looked over the possibilities. After a thorough examination of the considerable pamphlet, he called down to the front desk and ordered a feast and a massage. He'd get rid of these aches and pains yet.

Ten minutes later Jacen emerged from his hot shower and found that his food and massage were waiting patiently for him. His food was steaming away on a varied assortment of plates and platters, while his massage was an attractive woman staring at his towel clad body. Jacen smiled at the woman, and she looked toward a table that she had brought with her. "Would you like to get started?"

Jacen nodded eagerly and lay down on the padded table. Jacen knew this must be different for her. Her usual clientele were probably old men who were just stiff from arthritis. As much as a treat it might be for her, he was enjoying it ten-fold. Her fingers moved inside, under, and around his tight muscles, massaging a soothing cream into his back. "Either you just tried to lift up this building, or you have enough stress in your body for a man four times your age," she said, breaking the silence.

"I guess I've just had a lot on my mind today and hadn't noticed the amount of walking I had done until it was too late."

Jacen could feel her smiling at his back. "What could possibly occupy your mind so thoroughly?" she said with a tone of voice that told Jacen she already knew the answer. "She's a lucky girl," she added before Jacen could answer the rhetorical question. Jacen remained quiet as the woman continued her expert work. He could feel the tension run off his body like melted snow off a ton-ton's back. His mind relaxed, and he fell into an almost trance like state. After a while he began to realize that he didn't feel fingers on his back and legs any more. He rolled over slowly amazed at how limber he suddenly felt. The tingling sensation put him almost in ecstasy.

Jacen swung his legs off the table and stood gracefully. He turned to the woman who was putting her creams and rubs away. "Thank-you very much," Jacen said.

"The pleasure was all mine," she responded and meant it. She gathered her stuff together and left Jacen with his meal. Jacen stood in front of his huge feast not able to get over how loose he suddenly felt. With the pain and stiffness gone from his body he felt sleep starting to take hold. He looked longingly at the large, succulent pieces of meat and fresh bread. He sighed and covered the food with a heat shield. It would still be there when he woke up. With that Jacen changed into a pair of mid length pants and collapsed onto his bed in instant sleep.

***

Jacen's eyes opened slowly. He lay on his back and didn't move. The room was dark and quiet. A cool breeze blew in through the window and made a pleasant rustling sound with the curtains. Jacen was aware of another sound. It was a kind of munching sound.

"This meat is excellent." Jacen spun his head toward the unexpected voice, or at least he tried to. His head wouldn't budge. Now that he was fully awake he tested his other motor skills. Nothing. He could still move his eyes about and managed to glance down at his body lying flat on his bed. There were four thick straps tying his body to the bed. There were two across his legs, one across his waist, and the last across his chest, securing his arms. Jacen tried to pull against the straps, testing their strength, but found that the straps weren't holding him back. He just couldn't move his limbs period.

"The bread was a bit dry," the intruder continued as Jacen woke up, "but the taste was exquisite. Oh, and the wine," he said as he took a long gulp, "is magnificent."

The man stopped his rambling and watched Jacen's pathetic grunting and groaning. "Now what could it be?" he said, mocking Jacen's position. "Was the food poisoned? No couldn't be, he wouldn't be eating it if it was." Jacen stopped his struggles and tried to glance at his curious visitor, playing the part of the captured rather than the capture. "Besides, I didn't eat any food. I just came back from my walk, took a shower, got a massage and went to bed." Jacen figured it out without any help, but the now obnoxious man continued. "I've got it," he said, snapping his fingers and his face lighting up with false enlightenment. "The massage! That pretty woman was rubbing all those lotions into my back and legs. It must have been some kind of poison." The man got up from his chair next to the cart of food and walked into Jacen's field of vision. "Don't worry, she had nothing to do with it. I wouldn't want you dying and believing that such an innocent woman could be a culprit in such a heinous crime." The man smiled maniacally. "It was all me."

Jacen watched as he moved out of his field of vision. He tried to move his neck and got a little bit of motion, but not much. "Whhuuu-"

"You'd be amazed how much of your body's movement is tied into your back," he kept talking as he fiddled with something out of sight. "Why by just rubbing some numbing agent into your spinal column, you are rendered almost totally paralyzed. Of course when you get a professional masseuse to do it for you, you really can't go wrong. I doubt if you can move anything right now."

"Whhhoo-"

"What!" the man rushed over to Jacen's bedside as if the young Jedi were breathing his last words. Jacen abhorred the mocked concern he was getting but struggled on.

"Whhhoooo aaahhhrrr-"

"Who am I?" The man stood up, quite disappointed at the question. "Oh, I'm Ethanz Wrenk. My friends call me Ethanz. You can call me Wrenk." He walked back over to his unseen station and continued tinkering. "As I was saying, you are, for all intents and purposes, paralyzed.

"Now I know what you're thinking. 'But I don't want to be paralyzed. I want to move again. What about my smashball team back home?' To this I say, don't be worried. It usually wears off 10 hours after initial numbing. You had the massage at eight and it is two in the morning now. You have about another four and a half hours of immobility. But you shouldn't worry about that either, because as I see it, you only have about four more hours of life left. I guess either way your smashball team is screwed."

Jacen closed his eyes blotting out this sinister assassin. He reached out with the Force and tried to identify the poison element. He prodded his limbs with the Force. It was like trying to free something from a block of ice. The Force flowed over his joints trying to remove the foreign agent and limber up the lethargic appendages.

Jacen opened his eyes to find Ethanz standing over him with a syringe filled with a green liquid. "You see the idea is very simple. I have to make this look like an accident, but I want to have fun at the same time." The man was quick, too quick. He had the needle in Jacen's arm, empty of the green contents, and out again before Jacen could mount a defense.

"Whaat iss thaat-"

"What is that going to do?" Ethanz cut him off, surprised that he was regaining control his facial muscles so quickly. "That is going to activate your muscles for you. You know, speed up the process. As your limbs become more limber, this," he held up the empty syringe, "will cause your muscles to spasm. Of course it has been known to cause severe muscle spasms in some people. Heck, it causes severe muscle spasms in everyone. Your muscles will contract and expand so fast and hard that it is more than likely you will break a few bones. But that won't be a problem since I am going to throw you off the balcony when I'm done. They will be expecting broken bones don't you think?"

Jacen didn't want to tell the man that someone had seen him leap from his balcony the previous day and that he had landed quite unharmed, but he doubted that would improve his situation. As the Force melted away his paralysis, he felt his arm start to twitch.

Ethanz was coming back from his stash of the poison and saw his muscle twitching. "They were right about you. You are a fighter. You shouldn't start twitching for at least two more hours."

"I have always been a fast healer," Jacen said, hoping that his sudden vocal control would startle Ethanz enough for him to get loose.

Ethanz rushed over to him, amazed. Jacen located the buckle for the strap around his chest under his bed, and opened it with the Force. As the strap went suddenly slack, Jacen reached out with his twitching arm and grabbed the shirt of his torturer. In the process, he knocked the new syringe from his hand. Jacen had been controlling the spasms through the Force, but now allowed his arm to shake violently, throttling the man. Jacen searched for and released the other buckles through the Force and slowly swung his legs to the side of the bed, still throttling the man in his grasp.

Ethanz was not very physically intimidating, and the slight man was not holding up well to Jacen's punishment. Jacen concentrated hard on his arm and watched as it slowed down, and the green liquid slowly dripped out of the needle hole in his bicep. Jacen stood cautiously, still very stiff. He'd just have to get another massage. Jacen held the man at arm's length, his feet dangling half a foot above the ground.

"Wh-who are y-you?" This time it was Ethanz' turn to have trouble talking.

"The wrong person to mess with, buddy. This is all about Ariela, isn't it?"

Ethanz hadn't been told what this was about, but he knew who Ariela was and that she had run away that morning and had to be caught. Ethanz also knew that he should keep as much as he could secret from this man if he valued his life. Jacen asked his question again and lifted Ethanz' head dangerously close to the fan above. The frightened man nodded his head furiously. "I just get jobs and I carry them out, but yea, I know who Ariela is."

Jacen realized what kind of warning she had given him that morning a little better. He also understood what kind of mess she was mixed up in. "Where can I find her?" Jacen asked.

The man didn't respond but reached quickly into his pocket and produced a knife. The little man slashed at Jacen's arm. Before the knife cut home, Jacen threw Ethanz across the room. He hit the wall hard but came up into a practiced crouch. Ethanz eyed up his adversary. Jacen was clearly a man of incredible strength. He had fought against the numbing agent, broke the bands, rejected the muscle spasm, and the throw he had just performed on Ethanz was no love tap. But Ethanz could also see the Jacen had little to no mobility. Ethanz hurled the knife at the Jedi and charged after it. The small assassin was an excellent knife thrower and watched in horror, as the knife seemed to take a 45-degree turn in mid-air and thud into the wall behind Jacen. Ethanz came up short and was then hurled back into the wall by a terrific Force wave. The smaller man was slow in getting up this time and when he did, he saw Jacen coming toward him. In the eerie light of night, the Jedi appeared to be some type of zombie with his jerky, stiff movements.

Ethanz tried to run, but he felt a mysterious tugging on his body and was soon once again in Jacen's grasp. Ethanz had no more weapons, so he beat on Jacen's arm with his little fists. Jacen carried his prey like a foul smelling piece of laundry out onto the balcony. Ethanz stopped beating on Jacen's arm when he realized his capture's intentions, and hung on for dear life. In moments Jacen had the little man dangling precariously over free space.

"I will ask you once again. Where can I find Ariela?" Silence. "Pray tell me soon. I fear my arm is getting tired." Jacen let his arm slip a few centimeters and Ethanz scrambled for the balcony's railing with his feet, but Jacen lifted him up again. Actually Jacen could hold him there indefinitely. He was putting little to no effort into the lift with his arm, relying mainly on the Force.

"I can't tell you," he said looking Jacen in the eyes for a response.

"I understand," Jacen said and tossed Ethanz into the air and let go. He climbed about half a meter in the air, yelped as he reached the peak, hung there for a brief moment, and plummeted as gravity caught hold of him.

"Whaaaa-"

Jacen reached down, lightning quick and grabbed a flailing arm. He hoisted the man back up past the railing like he was examining a Calamarian sea squid he had just caught. "What did you say?"

Ethanz paused, looking Jacen straight in the face, trying to discern this curious man that held his life in his hands. As an assassin, he often had to view people from afar, trying to judge their character and how they would respond under different forms of torture. He had to know where people's breaking points were. Would he be able to get any information out of them at all, or would they spill everything at the first prick of the knife? He looked into Jacen's eyes and saw everything. "You won't drop me."

"You will tell me where I can find Ariela."

"No I won't."

"The way I look at it you have two choices," Jacen said, reasoning with the man. "You either tell me where Ariela is, and I let you go, or you don't tell me where Ariela is, and I let you go. Either way you won't have a life to return to. I don't know how gangs work over here, but from my experience, if you return to home base without killing me, you won't last too long, and you won't last much longer running the streets." Jacen paused letting Ethanz think about it. Ethanz knew Jacen was right. He had definitely lost this battle, and there was no return. "But, if you tell me where your gang is held up, I can go over there, reek some havoc, rescue Ariela, and maybe make them forget about you long enough for you to get far away from here."

Ethanz burst into laughter at this last statement. "You think you can just waltz in, take whatever or whoever you want, and then walk out." He continued laughing. Jacen knew that a lot of it was forced laughter meant to make him loose confidence in this situation. It did the opposite. The Jedi glared at the small squid at the end of his line. Ethanz stared back into Jacen's eyes and stopped laughing. "You just might," he said under his breath.

"Or, choice three is that I throw you into the park across the street. The tree branches will beak your fall and your bones, but it won't kill you. Then I can go downstairs and ask you again. I would much prefer that you tell me now and save me the trip. I want to go back to bed."

Ethanz no longer felt safe at the end of Jacen's arm. "Okay, suppose I tell you; what happens to me?"

"Like I said, you go free and run as far away as possible. Think of it as a head start while I deal with your employers."

"Okay," Ethanz agreed, "on the north end of town, past the rundown district, is an old grav-rail station. You should be able to find it on a map. If you follow the tracks east for about three kilometers, you will come to a huge, abandoned warehouse. It's not abandoned. If you go down there and make some noise, you'll meet my employers soon enough."

Jacen stood there thinking about what he should do. "Excuse me," Ethanz said, trying to get Jacen's misdirected attention. "Uh, Mister."

"Yea," Jacen replied without thinking, "you can go now, thanks."

"Gee, your so nice," Ethanz said. "Do you suppose you could let go of me?"

"Uh," Jacen said, obviously occupied with other thoughts, "sure, sorry."

"Thank-" Ethanz started but was cut off as Jacen simply let go. A scream tried to emerge from the small man's throat, but it felt like he had left his voice box up on the balcony. He watched the ground rush towards him at an incredible speed. He uselessly tried to brace himself against the upcoming impact, but four meters above the ground, he impossibly decelerated and landed in an uncoordinated heap on the sidewalk, uninjured. He angrily glared up at the fifth floor balcony, but Jacen was gone. Ethanz didn't stick around long on the ground. He gathered himself up, finding that he had left everything of value to him in the hotel. He toyed with the idea of trying to sneak back in and taking it all back. He toyed with this idea only briefly as he remembered who had just thrown him off the balcony. Being unhurt he was able to laugh at the irony. The assassin looked around for any witnesses and hurried off into the night.

Five floors up, a very tired Jedi Knight went to sleep.

***

Ethanz found little shelter in the clean streets of Rencrin. He needed to get to a transport and get off this planet as fast as he could. He didn't believe that Jacen would actually chase him after he was done with Borgan. But then he didn't think that the young warrior would last very long against Borgan in the first place. Jacen seemed to be incredibly strong, and with such a relatively slight frame and from the odd powers he had shown, he must have a few tricks up his sleeve, but no one got past Borgan. It wasn't Jacen he feared though. When morning came and Borgan saw that not only was Jacen still alive, but Ethanz hadn't come back, the streets would be crawling with people looking for him.

Before Ethanz could get a transport, he would need to get some money. There were two ways to get this done. He could steal it, or he could return to his room back at the complex and get it there. Stealing it was a hundred times easier than getting in and out of the complex without being seen or stopped, but the assassin had no tools or weapons, and any place worth robbing would have security systems that he wouldn't be able to get past. The other option was to become a petty street thief, robbing pedestrians. This was a very slow way to build up money and he didn't want to stay in town that long.

After a few moments of thought, Ethanz decided that the most direct route would be to simply steal passage aboard a transport. He could sneak on, steal a ticket, or even hide in one of the cargo holds. With his mind made up he made his way towards the nearest star port. The walk took about two hours and light was starting to creep into the eastern sky. The port was only mildly busy at this early hour. He made his way into the building and through security. He was glad that he had lost his knife. Wearing it so often, he would have likely forgotten to hide it before going through security.

He found himself in a very large, complex series of hallways and large waiting areas for departing and arriving flights. There were three other planets in this system that were habitable and ten others in nearby systems that were popular destinations for travelers. Anyone one of them would be fine. He took a seat in the waiting area and watched his surroundings, waiting for an opportunity to reveal itself. It didn't take long.

"Moaggy, could you take over here for a few, while I go take a break?"

"Sure Earn, just be quick will you, and bring me back a hot cup of hocken."

"Sure thing." The two men parted and Ethanz followed Earn at a distance. The employee went into the public refresher and Ethanz saw his chance. The assassin entered the door quietly and positioned himself next to the stall in use. He heard the man groaning and wished he'd hurry up. Finally Ethanz heard him flush and stand up. As the door to the stall unlatched, Ethanz braced himself. The door opened and the assassin kicked it back closed hard. Earn gave a small cry and stumbled back. Ethanz sprang into the entrance of the stall as the door rebounded back open and gave Earn a matching welt over his other eye with a swift kick. The startled employee stumbled backwards, barely holding onto consciousness, slipped on a wet spot on the floor, and banged his head into darkness.

After a quick change of clothes, Ethanz emerged from the bathroom and made his way to the first "employee only" door he could find. Through the door he found himself in a large maintenance shed with small carts whizzing about, carting people's luggage from ship to port and vise versa. Ethanz found he was out of dress now and quickly slipped on a nearby pair of cover-alls. He found himself a cart and followed the other vehicles to the next departure. The ship loomed in front of him like a huge arrow getting ready to shoot into space. The place was crawling with workers, and he thought it would be no problem for him to simply slip into a cargo hold, lock it, and get free transport.

"Going somewhere, Ethanz?"

The assassin spun around and found himself staring at Herink. "How, where, what-"

"You weren't trying to run away, were you?"

"No, I, I just-"

"Jacen beat you, didn't he? It's okay; he beat me to. He is a tough opponent. He probably got the location of the complex out of you, didn't he? Well now Borgan can deal with him himself. That was what he wanted anyway."

Ethanz gave a huge body sigh and visibly relaxed. Herink didn't fall for the feint, and as Ethanz turned and tried to sprint, the bigger man kicked his feet out, sending the assassin to the ground. "But that doesn't change the fact that you failed." Ethanz tried to struggle, but a lightning-fast, rock-hard fist sent him to meet Earn in darkness.

***

"This is flight 4-6-1 loaded and ready for take-off."

Ethanz woke, what seemed like seconds later, but he knew it was probably more like half an hour.

"Flight 4-6-1, you are clear for take-off."

Ethanz stood up and looked about. He seemed to be in a medium sized room with no lights. A faint glow came from above where there seemed to be a large heat source.

"Flight 4-6-1, we are flooding your box now."

"Thank-you, flight tower."

Water came rushing into Ethanz' room and he began to get a very bad feeling about his current situation. The room was about seven meters wide, four meters long, and four meters deep and filled with water very quickly.

"Starting primary ignition now."

The heat from above was intense as Ethanz watched the outer rockets ignite. In his last conscious thought, he cursed Borgan and wished Jacen luck.

"Full ignition and lift off."

***

Herink watched from the observation deck inside the star port. The ship blasted off in a huge plume of smoke and steam, rising like a majestic bird against the backdrop of the sunrise. He was standing next to an old woman who was watching the departing flight with resigned sorrow. "Oh, I hope she comes back for a visit soon," she said. "I do so enjoy my granddaughter's company." The grandmother turned to Herink. "Do you think you'll see your friend again?"

"I don't think so," he replied and walked out of the building.

****

Chapter 4

Ariela stirred her bowl of hot cereal slowly, not intending to eat it, but not wanting to get up. She glanced quickly over to the empty chair near the end of the long table. It was early in the morning, earlier than she had ever gotten up before. She had to be sure, though. She wanted to be certain.

"No, he didn't come back last night."

Ariela had hoped against hope that this was the case, and now that she knew for certain, she couldn't keep the smile from spreading across her lips. With this traitorous expression plastered across her features, she kept her face down in her steaming, creamed fimps and continued stirring.

"You know," continued the man behind her, "he had pulled off 27 straight jobs without the slightest hint of failure - until last night." He bent down to her ear when he said these last three words. His closeness helped wipe the smile off her face and she shrugged her shoulders violently, catching him in the chin. He stumbled back slightly, and she put the first spoonful of the cereal in her mouth, hoping to keep away another smile. It was surprisingly good.

Ariela spun away from the table, still sitting in her chair to look at the vile henchman. She hadn't seen him before, but Borgan had so many underlings, that this was not surprising. Her shoulder had apparently caused him to bite his tongue and he was in considerable pain. "You better hope they don't send me after him."

This was as obvious a threat as any he could have made. Ariela started a retort, but bit it back. Just ignore him, she thought. She turned her back on him and shoved another large spoonful in her mouth.

"You just tell your boyfriend to be ready."

Ariela spun back around fast enough to almost knock herself out of her chair. "He's not my boyfriend!" she tried to yell, but with a mouth full of creamed fimps it sounded like animal growling, spraying the cereal with each syllable.

The man looked at her, barely holding on to her chair with brownish cream dripping onto the floor. "Whatever," he said and walked away.

Ariela turned back to the table with a naive look of triumph somewhere under the creamed fimps that covered her face. "You have a little, uh," Borgan was sitting across from her suddenly and was wiping his chin, "you have something on your chin."

Ariela tried to hold back her surprise at the sudden appearance of the huge man. She brought a napkin up to her face and made an attempt to remove the mess. "What do you want?" she snapped.

"I want you to tell me everything you know about Jacen."

Ariela looked at him with contempt. The look was obvious. It said, I thought we went through this before. "Yes we have been through this before, and we are now going to go through it again. You will also tell me the truth this time. If I don't think you are telling me the truth, we will go through it a third time, only then we will use some devices keyed to helping you with your memory."

Ariela had seen those types of interrogation before. Any question, no matter how absurd or embarrassing would be answered without thought. She didn't want to go through that. If she told the truth now, she could tell only what she wanted to. "He approached me," she started, taking a sip of a tall glass of juice that was in front of her. "I was looking at an art piece, you wouldn't know what it was so I won't get into it." Actually Borgan likely knew more about the art that Ariela stole than she did, but this wasn't known to Ariela. "He came up to me, and I tried to ignore him, but he had this kind of presence about him that made me talk to him. Then out of the blue he started expounding on the philosophical meanings of this sculpture we were looking at.

"I had to admit that I was impressed. After that, the night went smoothly. We danced and talked. Nothing happened," she said this with added emphasis and stared Borgan hard in the eyes. The big man didn't flinch. "When the unveiling of the necklace came, I asked him to tell me what he thought about it. I had already stolen the real one, and I wanted to see if he was for real or if he was just full of it. I didn't really expect him to recognize it as a fake, but he did. In fact he recognized it in about five seconds at a distance of five meters." Ariela paused as she took another mouthful of the creamed fimps and a swallow of the juice.

"Well he got mixed up with all the royalty and security, and I slipped out of there as fast as I could. I had stashed the necklace and a change of clothes in a janitor's closet. I thought that I had a huge lead on everyone, but as I was just about to the roof, someone chased me down. I couldn't believe anyone could have made it up the stairs that fast, because I had taken the lift, and there was only one. My surprise was tripled when I saw it was Jacen. I evaded him on the stairs and made it to the roof ahead of him.

"When he made it to the roof we had a little fight." Borgan's expression turned to one of disbelief. "I know what you're thinking. 'How could you, a mere thief, fight and escape from a man who has single handedly defeated four of my men at once and my most trusted assassin?' I basically just got lucky. I had a weapon and he didn't. He simply parried me until he had a chance to disarm me, which he did quite effortlessly. It was very obvious that he didn't want to hurt me. He never hit me once. I don't think he knew it was me until the end, though. He had me pinned against the wall when he realized who he had been fighting this whole time.

"Jacen was so shocked that he let down all his defenses. I dropped him with a well-aimed kick and put him out with a pair of darts. I believe you know the rest of the story." Ariela was referring to the fact that they both knew that her slipping away the morning previous was an attempt to meet up with Jacen again.

"Why did you go see him again? Do you lo-"

"Do I love him?" Ariela laughed out loud. "I met him once for about an hour. I was just curious, that's all. It's not everyday that I meet a nice looking guy who knows all about art, dancing, and can fight better than anyone I had ever seen." Ariela spooned in some more of the cereal, which was rapidly becoming lukewarm. The advantage with telling the truth so openly, was the fact that she was able to hold back little tid bits of information that, under hypnosis or truth serum, would have come right out.

"Did he do anything that seemed to be supernatural?"

Ariela nearly choked to death on her fimps. She reached for her glass as tears from the effort of breathing streamed down her face. She slowly drank down the clog, and took several moments to compose herself. "What did you say?" Both of them knew his question had been answered and that her tid bits of information were no longer held back.

"Do you expect he is going to try and kidnap you now?"

Ariela noticed his choice of words. Anyone else would have said rescue. "Do I think that he is my knight in shining armor? No, I don't. Do I think he will try and confront the people who on two different occasions tried to cause him severe bodily harm for no reason what so ever? I don't honestly know." Borgan was smiling slightly at what she had said. "What?"

"You're right that he doesn't wear shinning armor, but he is a knight, of sorts."

"What are you talking about?"

"He didn't tell you, did he?" Ariela didn't waste her breath by asking what again and merely shook her head and shrugged. It was the first time that Borgan believed that she was telling the whole truth. "We did a little research on your friend Jacen Solo. Did you know that he is the son of the chief of state of the New Republic?" The shock on Ariela's face told Borgan that she hadn't had the faintest clue. "Your boyfriend seems to have quite a history surrounding him. He is a Jedi Knight."

Ariela realized that this should mean something to her, but it didn't. She started to ask, but Borgan cut her off. "He'll come, probably today. When he does, we will get him. If he manages to get to you first, I want you to remember where your loyalties are."

Ariela stood up so she could look down at the seated giant. "I will be loyal to whoever treats me fair and decent!"

Borgan rose out of his chair slowly until he towered over Ariela from across the table. He looked at her with eyes capable of burning wood. "You would be wise to obey, or else you will see what true unfairness and indecency is." With that, he turned from the cowering form in front of him and left the dinning room.

Ariela stood silently for several moments, soaking in the threat. She finally sat down in a defeated plop. Was she crazy? Was the tiny thread of hope worth chasing when failure was not only more likely, but also much more costly? She looked around the room, taking in the fine tapestries and exotic architecture. She did live in luxury, if she chose to take advantage of it. There were facilities to accommodate her every desire, or whim. She worked out in the gym and took advantage of the luxurious steam baths and massage treatments. She enjoyed the superb dinning and couldn't deny that the atmosphere in the complex was exquisite. Everything she could desire was at her fingertips. Almost everything. But was freedom worth the price that came attached to it? If she managed to escape, they would hunt her down. If they let one escape, others would be encouraged to do likewise. It was odd, she thought, that no one else seemed to be eager to leave. Was she stupid? Or was everyone else just so naive that they thought this was all there was to life?

What about Jacen? What was it about the man that intrigued her so? The answers that she blurted out to the thugs around her didn't come so easily in her head. Did she love him? No, she loved the hope that he represented. There was a difference, right? She tried to convince herself that there was as she took another spoonful of the cereal only to find that cold fimps were disgusting.

***

The sun rose slowly over the dilapidated building. At least it looked dilapidated. Jacen reached out with the Force for the umpteenth time but he came up against the same block that had struck him on all his previous attempts. Ysalamiri? No, he had felt them before. This was different. It was kind of like reaching out for a stone, but getting a handful of sand. You grasped the stone, but it seems so small that it blends in with its surroundings until it is just another grain of sand. It felt like trying to locate a drop of water in an ocean. Everything just blended together in a general mish-mash.

It had to be some kind of force field that masked energy sources from not only his sensitivity, but very likely from outside scanners as well. Jacen crouched under the elevated grav-rail and peered into the glowing morning sun. There was a small valley up ahead and the grav-rail ran level across it, reaching down with its cylindrical steel fingers into the treetops of the valley and girding itself on the solid ground below. Jacen guessed that from the deepest part of the valley to the grav-rail it was about 50 meters. It was in this deepest section that the warehouse was nestled. It fit snugly between two grav-rail supports and dug into the valley as the ground sloped upward on both sides of the narrow crevice. Jacen saw a small stream skirting its way through the valley and was straddled by the large building. Jacen guessed (and guessed correctly) that the building used to be an old mill and used what had once been a large river for a cooling agent in the metal forging process. The building came within ten meters of the bottom of the grav-rail, and Jacen figured that would be the best way to get in. The top of a ground based force field, being the part furthest from the generator, was often the weakest.

Jacen looked the scene over for traps. They had to assume that he'd be coming, and they probably recognized that the top of building would be the best place to enter. Jacen was counting on it. At first he had thought that the gang Ariela had gotten herself mixed up in was just a petty operation, but Jacen was beginning to realize that this wasn't the case. When dealing with clever opponents you always had take your reasoning one step further. If they knew that the top of the building was the best place to enter, hopefully they would consider it too obvious, and Jacen would be a fool to try it. With this attitude they would focus their defensive efforts elsewhere. Jacen was counting on it and hoping at the same time that his enemies weren't triple guessing him.

Jacen climbed up onto a nearby rock and surveyed the grav-rail from above. He knew how the thing had worked. Of course it was obsolete now, but it had been quite a big deal in its time. Now with all the advanced superconductor technology and the electromagnetic propulsion system of tube trains, this type of transport was out of date. Jaina had tried to see if she could improve on the idea some years ago while they were still in the academy. The rail consisted of two narrow cylinders that ran the width of the rail apart and were girded every three or six meters with a brace. The rails produced a small hyperspace field, which compressed the nearby space slightly.

The principal can be explained with an illustration involving a sphere. If you pressed down on the top of the sphere, nothing would happen. So long as you always pressed exactly perpendicular to the curvature, the sphere wouldn't roll and your finger wouldn't move. But, if you moved your finger over slightly and pressed, your finger would begin to slowly slide down the sphere, gaining speed as the slope increased. The grav-rail was built exactly parallel to the curvature of Estassia, so gravity always pressed down perpendicular. Since the space was compressed slightly with the use of the hyperspace field, what used to be a point load of gravity, now had a small area that was off-center. The end result was that gravity now had a small tangential component of force. The force wasn't much, but the result was like building a long road that only sloped down hill and never up. Once the train achieved a large speed, it could coast the rest of the trip and actually gain speed as it went. The system was inadequate because of the difficulty in stopping the trains. Braking was harsh on the very friction sensitive rails and since gravity was the only force being used, it took as long to decelerate the train as it did to accelerate it.

The rails were off right now, and Jacen climbed from his rock down onto the structure. Actually, though the idea of entering the force field from above seemed to be the best way to enter, moving along the rails was probably the hardest mode of travel. There were only three different members to walk on: two rails and braces spaced every six meters. During turns the braces got closer, but this was a straight section of the rail. Jacen tested his footing on the rails but it was like walking on ice. The incredibly frictionless surface had worn down some over the years, but not enough to make travel by foot reasonable. Jacen decided that the best way was to leap from brace to brace.

Before Jacen started, he took one last survey of the large building that was his destination. The Jedi kept his Force sensitivity at bay and merely observed with his other five senses. He couldn't see anyone on the roof and there didn't seem to be any lights near the top of the building. He had to be sure because once he started getting his momentum going on the rails it would be hard to stop if someone appeared. It was about 400 meters to the building. Not seeing anyone, Jacen filled himself and took a long leap. The young man flew gracefully to the next brace, landed smoothly on his right leg, and sprung out with his left leading. He continued the leaping jog, gaining speed as he went. He kept his breathing down and let the life force around him do all the work. When the building approached below, he started to time his leaps. Three braces later he took a little longer leap than usual, flew over the next brace, and fell between the parallel rails. As he fell he began to wonder if the shield was just an energy shield, or if it would reflect particles. If so, he was in for a very unpleasant collision.

Jacen alighted on the roof like a bird, having felt only a slight tingle as he passed through the shield. He looked around slowly, keeping his hands hovering over his lightsabers. He was wearing his forest green robe like always and it made a whisper of noise as he turned to and fro, checking his surroundings. The rooftop seemed to be empty save a few exhaust stacks that hadn't been used since the metal refinery had been in operation. At first Jacen didn't see any way down into the building, but soon spotted a small service door not unlike the one that had been on the museum's roof. Jacen remembered where he had first met Ariela and smiled. Why was he doing this? Was he acting as a warm-blooded male, or a Jedi Knight? He shrugged his shoulders. It didn't really matter to him.

***

Herink watched the monitor with interest. He had just watched Jacen flip down onto the rooftop. "That fall should have at least injured him."

"Any man who can travel the grav-rail like he just did, can survive a ten-meter drop," Borgan commented from behind him. "That's the same man who bested you in the alley way?" Borgan asked the question without any hint of animosity. He had no intention of humiliating Herink with the outcome of his last meeting, but Herink's feathers were ruffled regardless.

"Yes," he snapped, "he is the same one." Herink let his temper simmer as he watched Jacen entering the door on the roof and then the screen flickering to another camera to continue tracking the Jedi. "What do we know about him? About Jedi, I mean."

"As a planet we've kept our noses clean when it comes to inter-galactic affairs and have managed to stay out of the wars that have occupied most of the rest of the systems. In particular, the New Republic, the government that is courting our world for membership, has been heavily involved with these wars. In almost each and every case, the war has focused around these interesting people - the Jedi. I can't really tell you much about them other than lore. They are good in battle and are said to draw their energy from the Force, an all-present energy well that eminates from every living thing. As far as their limitations and special abilities, I understand that it varies from Jedi to Jedi and from the level of experience."

"He is young," Herink said, trying to down play the man they were watching on the screen. Jacen had just waved his hand in front of a locked door, and it had opened. "He is young," he repeated, "he cannot be that powerful."

"He beat you."

"I had a pipe; he had a sword." Herink drew his blaster and held it up, as if to impress the giant standing next to him. "We'll see how he does this time."

"Your men are in position?" Borgan asked, not in the least way impressed with his next in command's show of confidence.

"Yes. They won't fail this time."

"Why don't you join them, just to be sure."

Herink holstered his gun quickly at the obvious rebuke. "Yes sir."

Borgan watched as the large, yet smaller man scampered through the door and then turned his gaze back to the monitor to watch the "rescue" take place.

***

Jacen found only descending staircases and locked doors lying in his path. He began to wonder if he was totally wrong in thinking that this was the place, when he felt something coming from down the next flight of stairs. There was a definite mood down below. Someone was waiting for him. As much confidence as Jacen had in his abilities, he thought prudence was still the best choice in this case. There were no alternate routes available to him, so decided to make his own.

Jacen thought he had figured out the layout of the stair well and was sure he could bypass the next landing by cutting away a section of the wall. His lightsaber was out in a flash and a new doorway was created a few seconds later. Peering down through the hole he had created, Jacen saw that four meters below was indeed a landing. He leaped through the hole and landed quietly on the floor below. Above him and right around the corner, he could hear about five men waiting for him. Jacen played with the idea of attacking them from behind, but a noise from below caught his attention.

"Hey!" Someone was yelling at him from the descending staircase in front of him. Jacen leaped down the flight toward the guard as the startled man tried to draw his weapon. Jacen clipped him on the side of the head with a deactivated lightsaber. The man fell silently, but the alarm had been sounded. The commotion from above was obvious and Jacen turned down the next 90-degree stairway turn, just avoiding the blaster bolts that turned the last wall he had profiled into a permacrete sieve.

Jacen leaped down each stairway, opening and closing each door he came to, knowing that he was easily out distancing his pursuers. The next door opened and Jacen ran right into a broad chest. Jacen stumbled backward and crashed into the steps behind him. Herink smiled as Jacen lay sprawled in front of him. "Night time." The big man said as he drew and fired in one smooth motion. Jacen was in no position to block the close range shot and rolled over, feeling the section of steps he had been leaning against explode beside him. Before Herink could shoot again, Jacen rolled back over, swinging an ignited lightsaber wide. Herink took a very big step backward through the door and Jacen leaped up from the stairs as he shot again.

Jacen plastered himself against the wall in the wide hallway, giving Herink, who was on the other side of the doorway, no angle to shoot. Jacen tried to compose himself when his forgotten pursuers made their entry from above. Jacen made his mind up quickly and leaped through the doorway, lightsaber leading.

Jacen rolled into a ball, careful not to impale himself on his own weapon, all the while expecting to get shot. He came to his feet to find himself in some kind of dinning hall. Herink was across the room waiting for him. The man was sitting in a chair that was turned away from a large table. A quick examination of the room told Jacen that there were only three exits that he could see: the doorway he had just leaped through, and two behind Herink.

"Good show, so far, but now you will give up to me." Jacen looked over toward the stairwell, expecting the men to come through any second. "They have orders to shoot on sight, you see. So you have two options, either surrender to me or be killed by them. What's it going to be?"

Jacen grabbed his other lightsaber from his belt. "Neither." He stepped up to the stairwell and as the men came through, he cut them down. He made sure to keep the attacks non-lethal by first striking at their weapon and then rendering them out of action with a swift kick or a lightsaber handle to the head.

Jacen stood still suddenly. There had only been four men, and they all lay quiet on the ground. Herink tried not to be impressed, but he had seen such efficiency by only a select few. "Ah, you choose neither. That would be the choice where in I get to shoot you." Herink raised his gun slowly. Jacen stood ten meters away at point blank range. Herink fired. Jacen deflected. Herink blinked. Had he just seen the young man in front of him deflect a bolt that traveled at near light speed with a weapon that was no more than a couple centimeters wide? "Lucky son of a -" He fired again. Same result.

"By luck, do you mean random chance," Jacen asked as he walked toward the seated man, "or do you mean the advantage one opponent gains through superior skill."

"Luck, luck, luck!" Herink fired as quickly as he could pull the trigger. Jacen's blades moved in what seemed to be a memorized pattern of parries and motions. When Jacen got close enough he took one long swipe and relived the trigger-happy man of his weapon. "Impossible!"

"Yes quite," Jacen replied nonchalantly. "Now where is Ariela?"

"Right behind you." Jacen spun around to face Borgan who had Ariela in front of him. They had apparently come in through an entrance that Jacen hadn't noticed. Thinking Jacen's attention to be elsewhere, Herink rose from his chair and brought a blow down, aimed at Jacen's neck. Jacen casually reached up with his hand, caught the blow, and flipped the much bigger man over his shoulder.

Jacen acted like nothing had happened and kept his attention focused on this new opponent. He had never seen Borgan before and his size did not escape notice. "Hello Ariela," Jacen said almost as an after thought.

"Hello Jacen," she responded totally unemotionally.

"How touching," Borgan spoke up. Herink was getting up from the floor, found that he was directly between the pair, and quickly decided that this was a bad place to be. "Of course now you realize that you again have two choices. You can drop your weapons or you can watch me crush Ariela's pretty face."

"How do I know that if I pick choice 'A,' you won't go ahead with 'B' just for the fun of it?" Jacen asked.

"You don't, but I've held off this long, I might just hold out a little longer. But at the rate she has grown to be a pain in the neck, 'B' is pretty much inevitable. The choice you have is whether you want to watch."

"What makes you think I care what happens to her?" This question brought a startled look from his audience, especially Ariela. "I'm here to get the necklace back. Where is it?"

Borgan threw his head back with laughter. If Jacen had been ready for this, he might have been able to plan an attack. He hadn't been, and he didn't. "What a tangled web we weave! The necklace," he repeated, laughing again. "You expect me to believe that you broke in here to take back a necklace? Surely Jedi Knights have better things to do with their time."

"We do what we're hired to do," Jacen responded, trying to hide his surprise at his identity being known. He hoped that the full meaning of that title was still hidden to them. "We are like any other mercenaries. We work for money. I plan on making quite a lot of money for returning the necklace. So if you just hand it over, I won't have to beat up anymore of your men, and I can leave you so you can get on with crushing as many faces you want."

Again laughter came from in front of him, but it wasn't from Borgan or Herink. The laugh was much higher than a man of either of their sizes could produce. From the shadows behind Borgan came an old, frail man. He looked miniature next to Borgan, yet Jacen could sense an unnatural aura of power surrounded him. Jacen reached out with the Force but was at a loss to identify it. The Jedi looked at Herink for his response to the arrival of this old man and was not disappointed when the thug cowered away and left the room. The old man was still laughing. "A mercenary, you say. Hired for money? How the galaxy has changed. The Jedi used to fight for justice and freedom with personal gain far from their main motivation."

Jacen knew his cover was blown, but could think of no alternate course. "Yes, well, times have changed, gramps. But if you could just show me the necklace, I'll leave, and you can contemplate the changing universe all day while your walking demolition machine here crushes people's heads." Jacen wasn't so sure that the disrespect was a good thing, but he was sick of talking.

Apparently the old man was sick of laughing. His face turned cold. "Drop your lightsabers before you loose the hands holding them."

Jacen contemplated his situation. He stood about ten meters away from the trio. It was definitely too far away for a physical attack by either party; therefore, his lightsabers served little purpose. He deactivated them and began to place them on his belt. "On the floor, Jacen Solo." His last name shocked the weapons from his hands and they clattered to the floor.

"I don't believe we have been properly introduced," Jacen said as the older man began to walk closer to him, with Borgan as a much bigger shadow.

"No we haven't," he said, but left it at that. The trio stopped when they were about half the former distance from Jacen.

"Well maybe we would feel more comfortable negotiating if we were properly int-"

"Enough talk," the man said as he extended his hand and made a fist. Jacen's wind pipe snapped shut and he fell to his knees nearly startled into unconsciousness. He struggled to breathe in vain. He was on the verge on blackness when he regained slight composure and fought back with the Force. He felt a little air seep into his thirsty lungs and suddenly his throat was open and he was gasping on the floor. Jacen looked up at the older man in shock.

"How pathetic," he said at Jacen's prone figure. "You think that you have all the power in the universe, don't you?" Jacen tried to speak, but his adversary raised his hands and sent lightning bolts tearing into the Jedi's body. Jacen writhed in agony at this new onslaught. He was still out of breath from the previous attack and was in no position to defend himself. He reached out for one of his lightsabers. The weapon flew through the air, but changed direction drastically in mid-flight and soared into the old man's hand instead.

The lightning bolts stopped and Jacen didn't bother trying to get up. All of his muscles were quivering from the electric shock, and he had no control. "Wh-who-"

"You are so insistent on that introduction, aren't you? You may call me the Master."

Jacen felt the twitches subsiding and crawled a couple meters over to the table. He slowly tried to get himself upright. "How-"

"How am I doing this?" the Master finished for him, still not letting Jacen speak. "How am I doing this when I'm not Force sensitive? You're right, I'm not. But you tell me. How would someone inferior to you do something like this?" He waived his arm at Jacen who was now almost totally erect. A shock wave hit the young man and lifted him off his feet, sending him five meters back and landing on the edge of the table. Jacen hit the table with half of his back and fell off, landing hard on the floor. He started to rise and another wave hit him, throwing him like a rag doll into the wall.

Ariela watched this whole scene with one of Borgan's hands clamped like an iron brace on her shoulder, insuring her silence throughout the demonstration. She nearly cried out at this last blow. Jacen's head rebounded off the wall like a ball off a bat. She looked at his figure lying motionless on the floor. A tear came to her eye. She had done this. She should have walked away from him back at the museum. She was foolish to have thought of doing anything else. She had been hopeful. He had gotten further than anyone else had, and he had somehow been different from the start as well. Everyone else she had met had been so one-dimensional, so uninteresting, so Estassian. Jacen was special, but now he was going to end up like everyone else: a statistic.

Jacen stirred slowly on the floor showing he wasn't done yet. "I think it is time to quit son," the Master said as he walked toward him. Jacen moved so sluggishly, Ariela thought he would pass out from the effort. Jacen looked up into the Master's face. "Time to come quietly."

Jacen lifted his head up, and the Master kicked him hard under the chin, flipping him backwards. "Stop it!" Ariela could stand it no longer. "Can't you see he's finished," she managed before Borgan's hand adjusted itself on her shoulder to clamp down on her throat.

The Master turned to regard her outburst and Jacen couldn't ask for better cover. With out warning, the lightsaber the Master had grabbed leaped out of his hand and into Jacen's. The Jedi moved with surprising speed, stood, ignited the weapon, and struck at the frail, old man. The Master turned at the sudden movement, but didn't flinch as the blade crashed down on him. Jacen's swing faltered as he watched his blade bend away from the Master's form when it came within a few centimeters. Jacen had never seen a lightsaber blade reflected by any kind of shielding before. The Master reached out with his hand and sent two lightning bolts into Jacen's temples. The Jedi dropped his weapon as his mind went totally black. He fell back, landing hard on his back and didn't move.

****

Chapter 5

"Do you know what power is?!"

Jacen's eyes didn't want to open and recognize the fact that he was awake. His legs screamed it to him; his arms steadily ached the reality of his condition; his head throbbed to him continuously that he was no longer unconscious; but his eyes remained closed. Now his ears rang out the truth.

"I'm talking about true power. Not the ability to deflect blaster bolts with a sword, or the ability to lift rocks and twigs with your mind. I don't care about such tricks. Fear is power. Fear that you can subject on people. People who in return, give you power. Knowledge is power. The knowledge to understand your enemies. The knowledge to advance yourself past them and make them fear you. That is power. The Jedi draws his power from life. What if there is no life? Where will your power come from? You are dependent my boy. You are dependent on the same thing that supports you. You live. You use that life to gain your power. If you loose one, you loose the other, and both are as fragile as a pile of leaves in the wind. I could crush you now and remove all of that famed power with the pull of a trigger or flip of a switch."

Jacen opened his eyes to regard this boastful old man as he walked around him, flaunting his power. "You are weak. You control nothing, only yourself, and that control is dependent on the Force. I control this entire planet, and rely on no one for power. I produce it, and I make it grow. I decide who lives and who dies. I decide who gets elected and who gets overthrown."

Jacen tested his bonds. He was encased in some type of metal he wasn't familiar with. He was lying flat on his back with his arms above his head. He couldn't move much, but he could feel that his hands, feet, and waist were encased in this metal. "You might not believe me. All you know is that I am some old man who can shoot lightning from my fingers. I live in an old warehouse and have thugs under me. I steal necklaces and like to torture little boys. What you don't see are the politicians who make sure their houses are locked before they go to bed. You can't know about the notes that these men in 'command' find telling them what to do. You've never seen the flaming house or sick, dying, only child of those politicians who don't listen. You couldn't have seen that. You are too absorbed with yourself to notice anything that doesn't either excite your instincts or your hormones."

Jacen tried to move his appendages against his restraints to no avail. He prodded them with the Force, but they were incredibly stable and without seeing what he was doing, he couldn't be sure of positive results. "Your uncle calls himself a master. But what is he a master of? A small moon? A few students? That isn't much of a master. I know of hermits who claim more territory on desert islands. The Emperor had power, but even he was too self-absorbed to see what was going on around him to adequately control that power. You religion's history is full of people who are either so devoted to pacifism, or so devoted to death and destruction that none of you ever had the chance to realize what you had or what you could do with it. A taste. That's all I want. I want just a taste of the potential that you have at your fingertips. But, no, I have no talent in your religion so I am forced to make do without it, and look at me. I am standing and you are lying flat on your back. What does that tell you? It tells me that power isn't in reading someone's mind or swinging swords, but it comes with fear and knowledge.

"Vader, the Emperor, Exar Cuun, they had fear and they could use it, but they had no knowledge and could not see tomorrow as they tried to look years in advance. They were too caught up in their illusion of power that a young boy, slightly younger than yourself, took it all away."

"That same boy, your uncle, craves knowledge. He spreads it to everyone he meets. He can't confront the most evil opponent the galaxy has ever known with out trying to convert him. He preaches how you need to know the Force and know your role in life with regard to it. Oh, and he knows fear as well. He knows what it's like to fear. He cowers in abject horror at the ideas of facing darkness. He walks into battle content to die in each encounter he faces. Is that the mindset of a man who wants to spread his knowledge? Dead men can only teach by example, and what kind of example does he leave behind? He's a hermit. If he knew how to rule, how to make people fear him, he could be the most powerful man in the universe, but he would rather wear robes and drink tea as he lectures teenagers on the proper way to levitate rocks."

Jacen looked around the room as the Master collected his thoughts. The room was obviously some type of prison cell. There were no windows in his field of vision, which was very limited. He closed his eyes and opened his mind. The room was tight. There was one door that was presently open and seemed to have no locking mechanism on it, but on further probing, Jacen found that it was self sealing, and when closed, it would be just as secure as a wall. He was cast in a metal block that was part of the floor and the floor was part of the walls. He was, for all intents and purposes, part of the room.

"So now I am faced with a decision. I have this planet in my grasps and have plans for more. I have developed a power base here. This is just one of the many compounds I have placed over this planet. The petty thieving and mayhem that you see on the outside is just to keep the men interested. Besides, I like to collect art. I was planning to make a few visits to some near by planets and see if I can't persuade them to see things my way, but now you're here with your mother and her government soon to follow. You see I have knowledge. I know what the New Republic stands for and what their influence here will do to me. Well now I have to make a decision. Do I go on with business as usual, ignoring this change of events like the Emperor did, or do I treat your government with the respect they deserve? That isn't much of a decision. The real choice lays in what I need to do with you. Feel happy that you have lasted this long. Each breath you take sets a new record for all previous in your position. On the outside you look to be too valuable to simply kill. Will your government listen to me if I hold you ransom? Not likely. What will their reaction be, if I say that you are dead, and we don't want any more representatives? I can have our diplomats say that, you know. I have a little bit of influence in that area."

"I have an idea," Jacen said, finding a spot to speak in the Master's never ending tirade. The Master stopped his pacing and stood over the prone Jedi with his arms crossed and a smug look on his face. "You can let me go, and I can go tell Mommy how it is."

The Master regarded Jacen for a moment, not knowing what to make of this sarcastic juvenile that lay before him. "I suppose that I should let Ariela go with you as a gesture of good faith."

"What is this hang up you guys have with me and Ariela? Just give me the necklace and I'll be happy."

"I should kill you now. Likely I will anyway, though Herink has been begging me to let him do it. It is really quite pathetic to see a grown man beg, but it seems that you have made him look foolish twice now."

Jacen didn't recognize the name, but he could guess whom he was talking about. "What can I say?"

"Well I must leave you now. I need to make a few arrangements. As I said, I think your usefulness is at an end, and Herink will probably sneak in while I am gone and kill you, so I guess this is good-bye."

"Wait!" Jacen said, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice.

"What is it now?"

"You're not following protocol."

"Protocol?"

"Yea, you're supposed to tell me how you do everything. The bad guy always does it right before he kills the good guy, so that when the good guy evades the assassin, he can bring down the bad guy."

"You read way too many books. This isn't fiction my friend."

"Humor me."

"I've already told you everything you need to know. Knowledge is the key. Knowledge exhibited in technology. When a ship uses a tractor beam to bring in another ship, do you gasp in disbelief and say that the bigger ship must be using the Force? Or when a bare wire is lying on the floor, shooting out bursts of electricity, do you point at the object and say that it is using the Dark Side to produce the sparks."

"Are you trying to tell me that you have all these devices built into your body?"

"I told you that I produce my own power. I have designed myself to inflict fear in others. My knowledge in technology has created who I am and what I can do."

"So I guess you plug in every night just like a droid, huh." Jacen felt his throat contract as he finished the statement, but had been ready for it and fought back with the Force.

"I am completely self sufficient. Always remember that." With that, the Master left Jacen alone.

***

The door chimed quietly. Ariela tried to smirk at the irony. The door chime was a very poor means of announcement, especially for who she knew to be at the door. She thought back to her home. She had grown up in near poverty far from the luxury and technology that surrounded her now. Back in her home the walls were made of wood and the doors had knobs. When people came calling, they knocked on the door.

The chime sounded again. The chime was so impersonal. Ariela could remember her mother tapping softly on her door to wake her in the morning. She could remember her brother knocking as hard as he could to demand entrance. He had been young and felt that somehow he was being cheated if anyone did anything without him. Privacy was something that was hard to teach to him. Then there was the time she had tried to get too much privacy and had snuck a boy into her room at night. Her father's pounding on her door had been quite emphatic then.

Ariela sighed as she listened to the chime a third time, still making no move, physical or vocal, to respond to it. She missed her family dearly. She longed to be near them again. It was a futile longing, she knew, because no distance, no matter how many light years vast, could compare with the small gap between life and death, and she and the rest of her family were on opposite sides of that gap. What she missed most of all was the special feeling of being needed, of being made to feel special and unique. Back then everyone's knock had been different. Everyone's step on the wood floor in front of her bedroom had been unique. Now everyone was content to be simply a number, or a statistic.

She knew who was on the other side of her door, as she listened to the chime for a fourth and last time. Everyone was content to be represented by a monotone chime. Of course technology was forcing it upon them. They could have knocked if they wanted to, but the double layered, vibration resistant durasteel wouldn't have made so much as a soft tapping sound. Or so she had thought.

The pounding was like thunder, and it sent Ariela leaping off her bed in horror. "Come in," her voice shrieked, and the computer barely recognized her voice pattern and the command. The door slid open to reveal a very flustered Borgan, or at least most of him. The door slid to a halt when it was only three-fourths of the way open due to a slight warp that had been inflicted upon it only moments ago in an effort to get Ariela to open it.

Borgan turned sideways, mumbling something under his breath about the unreliability of today's high-grade durasteel, and managed to squeeze his wide frame into Ariela's room. Ariela had regained as much composure as she could, sitting on the edge of her bed. A single light from an old electric lamp sitting on a small table next to the head of her bed produced the only light in the room, and it cast eerie shadows on the big man in front of her. She knew her face showed signs of recent tears, but she didn't care. The stone cold giant in front of her hadn't shed a tear in his life, she was willing to bet. He probably didn't even have any tear ducts.

"We are a little disappointed in you."

Not half as disappointed as I am with you, Ariela didn't say. She sat on her bed, staring unblinkingly at Borgan, ready for the lecture she expected.

"Your loyalties are with us. In Convern province," he said, changing topics abruptly, "they have discovered an ancient underground city in a series of vast caves that a drilling operation has uncovered. They have recovered some inc-"

"What happened to Jacen?" Ariela interrupted in a placid voice.

Borgan regarded her for a long moment. He came very close to throttling the young woman right there, but held back. "They have recovered some incredible artifacts that they are at a loss to interpret. We want you-"

"You killed him, didn't y-"

"We want you to relieve them of the trouble," Borgan cut her off through clenched teeth. "You have a ticket aboard the sub-rail leaving from the downtown central station tomorrow at-"

"You did kill him."

"You will be carrying two cases in which to bring back the artifacts. You will need to-"

"No."

Borgan took a swift step forward, and in a blur of motion, slapped her across the face. Ariela rolled with the blow and landed hard on the floor next to her bed. The slap had little force behind it, for Borgan could have just as easily knocked her head clean off. Ariela picked herself up from the floor and sat back down on her bed. She looked hard at Borgan, having to blink a tear from her left eye. The big man watched as the small water droplet rolled down her red cheek, still throbbing from the slap. "I won't do it."

Ariela found herself on the floor again, this time on the left side of her bed and with a matching welt on her right cheek to go with the one on her left. She picked herself up again and sat down without so much as a sound, letting the tears come down her face in larger numbers now. "I'm done."

Borgan held his third slap in check, seeing that physical punishment wasn't going to work in this situation. "Yes, he's dead."

Ariela had already expected this, but the fact of her guess being confirmed didn't exactly slow the tears from her eyes. "I've paid my debt. I want out now."

Borgan looked at her as if she had grown a third ear. "You want out?"

"I have more than paid my debt to you through the countless things I have lifted, and now I want you to keep your promise that you made to me all those years ago." Ariela was reigning in her flooding emotions, and trying to make her argument as she had planned, knowing from the start that it was a moot point.

"You owe us your life. If I hadn't saved you from that band of thugs you would be dead now. How can you repay me for saving your life? Exactly what credit number did you arrive at that adequately defines the value of a life?"

"My life isn't worth Gamorrean dung in here. I could pay for my life with the glass necklace you gave me to swap with the real one. What good is my life if I can't live it? Life is more than breathing in and out, eating and sleeping, stealing and killing. Life involves joy, sorrow, happiness, sadness, and love."

"You do love him."

Ariela's built in reply to that question misfired. She had bitten off so many heads in the past day when she had been asked that question, that her answer had become automatic. It no longer was. "Maybe. Maybe I do, but then I don't really know what love is. I lost all my emotions back on Trinxon when I lost my family. Not that you would know that, you emotionless piece of steel."

Ariela expected retaliation to the insult, but Borgan did not feel insulted. "You will be carrying two cases in which to bring back the artifacts. You will need to be trained as to how to handle the artifacts and how to store them in the cases. Go to the seminar room this afternoon after the noon meal." Borgan left.

Ariela sat on her bed unmoving. What was she going to do? She couldn't fight this battle and expect to win. At least she couldn't fight the battle alone. What was it with Jacen? She had met better-looking guys. She had met stronger guys. She had even met smarter guys. She had never, however, met anyone who had peaked her curiosity as this young Jedi did. What was a Jedi? Ariela had only studied what was necessary to pass as an art expert at the many museums she had visited and eventually robbed. Jedi were new to her, and the fact that Jacen was one seemed to excite her even more.

The words Borgan had spoken still rang in her head. -You do love him.- She hadn't loved in so long that she couldn't be sure. She knew that she loved the hope that he had brought into her life. Hope that there was still a world out there that could provide her with real joy. Ariela had seen that life in the young man's eyes as they had danced together and even as they had fought together. He had a carefree attitude and took what was thrown at him in stride, handling everything that came his way. Ariela had a vague memory of being like that back when she was young. She had been able to handle everything. Well almost everything.

Ariela took pause as she reflected on exactly what Borgan had said. -You do love him.- He had used the present tense.

***

Jacen closed his eyes and gathered as much strength as he could muster. He tried to pull his arms and legs free, but there was simply no leverage to be had and no give in his bonds. He couldn't move at all. His arms were encased in metal up to his elbows, and his legs and torso were encased likewise. The feeling of security was unlike anything that Jacen had experienced before. He couldn't so much as wiggle a finger. It felt like the metal had been poured over him in a molten state and allowed to harden around him. He knew that was impossible though. His flesh would have evaporated as soon as it came in contact with the molten metal. Steel had a melting point high enough to evaporate skin and bone on contact.

Something struck Jacen. This wasn't durasteel or anyother type of steel. Jacen wasn't as well versed in technology and construction as were his brother and sister, but he knew enough about materials to be able to recognize common metals. For the first time he actually examined the metal encasing him instead of just the way it was encasing him. It was definitely not steel. In fact, it looked more like lead, but it was far too strong to be the soft metal. It did have that lack of luster that characterized lead, however, and Jacen wondered if it wasn't some kind of strange alloy. What was it that made lead special? Lead has a low melting point! Of course, Jacen thought, that would explain the cold temperature in the room. Lead's melting point was still far too high for his skin to tolerate, but perhaps this strange alloy had a much lower melting point.

Jacen closed his eyes again. Instead of filling himself with the Force, he channeled the energy into the metal. After a few minutes of hard concentration, Jacen began to feel the metal loosen its hold on his appendages. The metal seemed to settle upon itself and gained the texture of an extremely thick cream. Jacen slowly pulled his right arm free of the bond. He held a small lump of the metal in his hand and squeezed it in front of his face. The metal oozed out between his fingers. A minute later, Jacen was standing up, totally free from the casing.

Jacen's limbs were incredibly sore from the straining he had put them through in their tight confinement, and he spent several minutes flexing and stretching to alleviate the stiffness. A sudden mental alarm brought him into action. He spun towards a section of the wall and watched as the outline of the door made itself visible in the previously smooth wall. The master had told him that Herink would be coming in for him, and the big man was obviously one to keep his appointments.

Jacen ran up to the wall and flattened himself against it, right next to the doorway. The door swung inward, and Jacen saw the glint of a wicked blade lead the thug into the room. Herink took one long look at the empty casting and then spun around to receive a solid right to the jaw from Jacen. The man staggered back but recovered quickly and charged. Jacen threw a Force wave at him, but it had no effect on the enraged man. Jacen dodged a deadly swipe across his midsection and spun away from the wall as Herink charged with his knifepoint leading.

As Herink turned away from the wall, Jacen tried to apply a choke hold with the Force, but the effort involved in dodging Herink's continued attacks, made him loose his grip. Seeing that there was going to be no easy way out of this, the Jedi positioned himself to intercept Herink's furious attacks.

Herink swiped high with his blade and Jacen batted it wide with his right hand and sent a punch toward the thug's head with his left. Herink deftly moved his head a few centimeters to the side and Jacen's fist flew past the big man's ear. Not letting the missed punch become wasted, Jacen opened his hand as he brought his arm back, grabbing onto the back of Herink's head in an effort to pull his face down to Jacen's upcoming knee. Before the move could come to completion, Herink brought his blade back across his body aimed at the inside of Jacen's elbow. The Jedi released his grip in an effort to keep his forearm attached.

The two men measured each other for a brief moment and went back into the furious dance steps of death. Jacen felt the knife cut through his clothing several times, but he always batted it away before it could draw blood. Herink was fast, but Jacen was faster. Herink was also a creature of habit and Jacen soon recognized a pattern in the madness of his attacks. The big man thrust ahead again, but instead of batting it aside with an open hand, Jacen grabbed the wrist and pulled hard, stepping aside as he did so. Herink stumbled forward and Jacen gave him a swift kick in the rear as he went passed. Jacen had been planning this move for the past few moments, and had picked a spot on the wall behind him earlier in the fight. Herink's knife hand was out-stretched as he saw that he was on a collision course with the wall behind Jacen. He braced himself for the collision, but it didn't come. The big man's knife and arm sunk into the molten wall up passed his wrist, and it held fast as Jacen cooled it with the Force.

Herink tugged furiously at his anchored arm to no avail. He turned to look desperately at Jacen and received a solid blow to the face. Herink's head bounced off the wall from the punch, and he fell into unconsciousness. His body slumped against the wall, supported by his arm.

Jacen stepped cautiously into the hallway and closed the door behind him. The door sealed itself and Jacen saw that it looked exactly like the rest of the wall. The perfect dungeon, he thought. No one can find it for a rescue. Jacen was aware of an electronic surveillance present throughout the compound and kept himself well hidden from the inferior devices. 

As he walked down the winding corridors, Jacen tried to formulate a plan. He had come into the compound with the intention of freeing Ariela from captivity, but he now understood better the kind of people he was up against. He had no intention of leaving the complex without at least trying to get to Ariela again, but now he proceeded with extreme caution. What was he doing this for anyway? Jacen's built in response to that question misfired. He wasn't here for the diamonds like he had told so many people. He was here for Ariela, that much he could answer with a hundred percent certainty. But exactly why he was here for Ariela, still eluded him. Her beauty in the museum had initially excited him. He had then been drawn to her grace on the dance floor. Her secret identity that was revealed to him on the roof had made him immensely curious. Finally he had become emotionally attached to her by her captivity in this organization. Now he didn't know what he felt. Love seemed like a strong word, but there was something to be said for it.

As Jacen found himself wandering into the dinning area where he had fought with the Master, he was faced with a difficult situation. He had no way to find her. The two of them didn't share the mental link that he was so accustomed to with his siblings. As he stood there thinking, he forgot that he was unhidden in enemy territory, and a man walked into the room caring a tray of food. Jacen braced himself, expecting to be attacked or for some alarm to be sounded, but the man simply nodded toward Jacen, set the food on the table, and left.

A cook, Jacen thought. It must be close to noon, and he is simply preparing for the men to come and eat. Would Ariela come as well? Jacen looked around the room desperately for a place to hide. A few small potted plants in the corner called out to him as adequate cover, and he quickly hid himself behind them, adding to his camouflage with the Force.

***

Ariela ate her food without really tasting it. She had made up her mind. She would take the job. What other choice did she have? However, she had no intention of coming back. She was certain that several henchmen would follow her to insure she didn't try to run off, not like there was anywhere she could run. She planed to botch the job and get caught. Now that she knew what freedom looked like from gazing into Jacen's eyes, anywhere but free would seem like a prison to her. What was the difference between a provincial prison and this more private one? Likely, Borgan and the Master would find a way to get her released, and she would eventually have to come back here and face the music. Maybe she could kill someone while she botched the job. Murder had a very strict penalty on this planet of perfectionists.

Ariela walked back to her room, remembering that she had to go to that stupid information seminar about how to care for the dumb artifacts. She'd go, but she wouldn't pay attention. Maybe if she messed up with the artifacts and ruined one of them, they wouldn't ask her to do anything else for a while.

The door to her room slid open as the sensors in front of it recognized her, and she entered. She had eaten early and still had time before the lunch hour was officially over, so she decided to take a shower to try and lift this gloomy mood from her mind so she could at least pretend like nothing was wrong. She went into her personal refresher, and thirty seconds later she was standing in a cascade of falling water and rising steam. She wasn't in the shower for more than two minutes when a small light blinked above her water temperature console, telling her that someone was at the door. No, she thought, they can wait until I'm finished. When she saw the light blink again, she thought better of it. She wasn't sure if her door could take another one of Borgan's knocks.

Ariela shut off the water, and grabbed a towel. Her long blonde hair was dripping water all over the floor as she tried to dry herself. She reached for her robe, but thought better of it. She was sure that it was Borgan. No one else had any reason to come calling. As many opportunities as the big man had had to take advantage of her, he hadn't. Ariela was finally beginning to realize that he had absolutely no emotions at all, sexual or otherwise. Besides, if she showed up at the door in just a towel, it would drop a major hint that she was busy, and now was not a good time.

She walked into her main bedroom as the door chimed a third time. "Come in," she said, and the door slid open. "Jacen!" Ariela was hit with several emotions all at once: surprise, joy, astonishment, elation, and embarrassment.

"Uh," Jacen said as he looked at her very shapely body beneath the small towel, "if this is a bad time . . ."

"Yes! I mean no! I mean - come in," Ariela finally managed. Jacen complied and the door slid closed behind him. Ariela was thoroughly confused. Was this an impostor? She looked briefly into his eyes and realized he was genuine. What was she supposed to do now? What if Borgan came? Did they know that Jacen was still alive? She was not in a sane state. "I need . . ." she started, not sure where she was going with the thought.

"Clothes?" her visitor suggested.

"Yes!" she said a little too loud and triumphantly, as if she had just solved the biggest puzzle in the known universe. "I need clothes." Ariela ran back into the refresher. She emerged seconds later wearing slightly less material than she had on when she entered. "Now I need . . ." she began again, thinking of how well her voiced thoughts had produced the answer last time.

"Pants," Jacen offered, trying not to stare at the near naked, confused woman.

"Yes!" Ariela hollered enjoying her little game and how well she was doing. She raced over to her closet and donned a pair of loose fitting black pants.

"And a shirt," Jacen went on, sparing her from speaking aloud again.

Ariela looked at Jacen with profound hurt in her eyes. "I know how to dress myself, thank-you very much." Sure enough, a minute later, Ariela was publicly presentable. She had also calmed down considerably and was somewhat sheepish when she realized how she was behaving. As she pushed her second foot into her boot her emotions caught up to her actions and she ran over to Jacen. "You're alive?"

A million sarcastic responses jumped to mind, but Jacen thought none of them appropriate for the situation and merely nodded. "We have to hurry. I don't know how long we have before the alarm is sounded that I'm out."

"Right," Ariela said, now fully back in control of her senses. She ran over to the corner of the room and pulled out her bag and began going through the contents.

"Do you know of a good way out of the complex?"

Ariela stopped what she was doing and looked up at the wall, thinking for a moment. What was she doing? They couldn't just walk out of here. She had tried that yesterday morning and hadn't gotten very far. "There are several," she said and turned to look at Jacen, "but none of them are easy. In fact, none of them are remotely possible. There are security cameras everywhere and security guards posted at every exit. Plus once they find that you've escaped and I don't show up at my meeting, they will be scouring the place for us."

"Give us a little chance, please," Jacen pleaded with her. "How did you get out yesterday?"

"I waltzed through the front door," she replied.

Jacen regarded her for a few moments. "I hope you aren't surprised that you got caught."

Ariela gave him a dirty look. "I was hoping that it was so obvious, that they wouldn't pay it any attention." She paused, returning to her mental list of exits. "There's the roof, there's the garage where all the vehicles are stored, and then there's the sub-rail."

"What's that," Jacen asked in reference to the last item.

"It's the underground express transport system. It runs on electro-magnetic propulsion-"

"Yes I know what it is. I meant, 'How do you get there from here?'"

"The new transit was built along the same path as the old one," Ariela responded, referring to the out of date grav-rail that existed above the complex. "Which means that the sub-rail runs directly underneath this complex. Borgan has a secret tunnel that goes down into the system. He even has his own car that he can use to travel the railway when no other trains are due. But it's tough to get down there and if we get caught in the tunnel when a train comes . . ." Ariela slammed a fist into her open palm, letting Jacen imagine the result.

"That's the way we're going," Jacen said, feeling confident that the Force was leading him in the right direction.

"But-"

"No buts," Jacen cut her off.

"Okay," she said reluctantly.

"And don't worry," Jacen added. "It won't be as hard as you think."

****

Chapter 6

True to Jacen's word Ariela found that their trip down through the compound was easier than she had expected. She knew that everyone remained busy during the day and very few people stayed in the compound. Most of the henchmen had merchants to terrorize or spice deals to seal. Ariela wondered what it would be like to be able to leave this old warehouse whenever you wanted to and not have to be worried about being followed. If you didn't try to run away at every chance you got, she thought, you would be trusted more. If this escape attempt failed, she would definitely be in the vrelt house then. She looked up at Jacen's face as he lead the couple down the hall, concentrating to keep their location hidden.

Ariela starred at the security cameras on the wall as they walked directly in front of them. She could see nothing wrong with them but trusted that Jacen was using his strange powers to keep them invisible to the electronic surveillance. They passed no one as Ariela directed them to an old elevator. "If we go down three levels in here, we'll be right next to the entrance to the underground tunnels."

Jacen paused in front of the old piece of equipment, and reigned in on Ariela's wrist as she walked up to it. "Let's not," he said. "I don't like it."

"What do you mean you don't like it? Sure it's not a turbo lift, but it'll get us there."

"That's not it," Jacen responded. "It will look very strange to the big boys upstairs when they see a elevator going down, but the security cameras register no one on board." Jacen looked around nervously, realizing that they had been standing in one place for too long. It had been almost an hour since he had left Herink in the cell unconscious. He was do to wake up any time now. "There has to be stairs going down somewhere." Jacen led them down the hall until he stopped short in front of a odd looking door with a key pad in the wall next to it. "This is it."

"Great," Ariela said, not happy that they hadn't taken the elevator, "we'll never break the code. We don't even now how many numbers long it is."

Jacen looked at her with mocked pain in his eyes. "Have a little faith, dear." Jacen tested the term of endearment and kept to talking to keep any retort of hers at bay. "I'm sure I'll figure it out." Jacen hovered his hand over the keypad, and his eyes were half closed as he kept talking. "I'm sure that it is a simple five digit code," he paused. "Something like 5-1-0-4-1," he said as he pressed each corresponding button on the keypad.

Ariela gasped at his apparent bold guess, but was doubly surprised as, a few moments later, the door slid open. Jacen looked at her with a lopsided grin. "Nothing to it."

Ariela tried desperately to hide her surprise. "You're my hero, honey," she responded in a monotone voice, adding the last word with a light dose of sarcasm.

Jacen bowed low in mocked thanks and waved his arm through the open doorway, gesturing for Ariela to enter first. "To absorb any laser defenses, no doubt," she mumbled at the gesture but walked through the temporary gap in the wall anyway. Jacen followed right behind and the door closed behind them.

The two escapees found themselves standing atop a long stairway that led down into the ground surrounded by bare rock. "Is this part of the compound still under construction?" Jacen asked. Ariela didn't answer the rhetorical question and together they started down the dark stair well. There were lights every twenty steps or so, but the darkness reminded Jacen that he didn't have either of his lightsabers with him. He really wanted to go back for them, but realized that there were more important concerns now. If he was alone, he might go back to look for them, but he wanted to get Ariela away from here.

It wasn't long before they had descended the three levels that Ariela had said were necessary and found that they were still in a natural tunnel that sloped down gradually. After a few dozen steps they found themselves at the bottom of the elevator. Ariela gave Jacen a look that said it would have been faster if they had just taken the device originally, but neither of them said anything. The cave tunnel continued down with the lights growing further and further apart. Jacen could sense that they were far away from the security net and was very surprised at how easy the escape had been.

"Going somewhere." Jacen and Ariela rounded a corner and ran head on into Borgan. "I think you two love birds are a little far from home."

Jacen launched himself into a flurry of punches and spin kicks so fast that Ariela couldn't even follow them. Borgan too had no time to react and simply let the blows bounce harmlessly off is body. Jacen finished his brutal attack with a spinning kick that was aimed high at Borgan's head. The monster managed to bat the kick aside with a free hand and Jacen's momentum was ceased suddenly, throwing him precariously off balance with both his feet off the ground. He fell hard on his shoulder blades on the rocky floor and barely rolled backwards avoiding a stomping foot that would have easily ended his life.

As Jacen scrambled back to his feet, Ariela tried to engage Borgan in conversation to distract him. "How did you know we were coming down here?"

"The same reason you came down here," the big man replied as he swung a fist a Jacen. Apparently the giant could fight and converse at the same time. Jacen yanked his head back and watched the huge fist slam into the stone wall. Borgan didn't even grunt as his fist reduced the section of rock to rubble. "This was the best place to go, so I got here first."

Jacen dodged a few more blows and landed a few of his own. In reality, the punches that the young Jedi landed hurt his fists more than they could ever hurt Borgan. After dodging a particularly close blow, Jacen sprung backward three meters to better surmise the situation. They were in a narrow tunnel three meters wide and two and a half meters high. The incredibly tall Borgan had, at times, less than ten centimeters of clearance above his head. Jacen could tell that the terrain favored him tremendously, but that was the only thing he had going in his favor. Something felt odd about the huge man and it took Jacen a few moments to figure it out. Not only did the monster's arms look like they were corded with durasteel cables, they really were. Jacen could sense an incredible amount of metal in his adversary's body. The person in front of him was more machine than man. Jacen remembered how the Master had perfected his body with technology, and apparently the old man had done the same for Borgan.

Jacen knew that he could beat this monster under normal conditions and with weapons, but neither were present. Although he was quicker, and in reality, stronger, both of those qualities were diminished in this cavern. Jacen could produce an incredible amount strength with the Force, but he needed time and concentration to do it. He had neither. A master in the Force could produce strength in a split second's time. Jacen did not have that kind of experience yet. The Master's words back in the cell rang in his ears. -You are dependent. You are weak.- Jacen had shrugged those comments off, paying them little notice, but now he saw what the Master had been saying. The Master and Borgan could produce results immediately because the power came from within them, easily accessible. Jacen had to depend on his ability to draw power from around him, a task that was not always easily accomplished, and was never as simple as just using something you already had. Jacen tried to strengthen his position in his mind by saying that his lightsabers were part of him and with them he was as powerful as anyone else in the galaxy. This was true and few people, if any, could beat Jacen one on one dueling, but he didn't have those weapons now, and they only reminded him once again how dependent he really was.

Borgan approached the contemplating Jedi slowly, respecting Jacen's prowess. Ariela was a meter behind Jacen, making sure to stay clear and ready to bolt from the scene if Jacen should falter. Jacen decided that brute strength would not work against this mechanical monster and he picked out three pressure points on Borgan's body and attacked. The Jedi jumped straight into the big man's chest, and as Borgan tried to hug Jacen to him, the younger fighter punched hard into the bottom of the big man's chin. While the blow did little and wasn't Jacen's goal, it thrust him to the ground and under the giant's grasp. As Jacen fell between the taller mans legs, he did the splits, sending both of his heels into the inside of Borgan's knees. At the same time Jacen thrust a fist the man's groin. Jacen used his last appendage to brace his fall absorbing the fall as he rolled onto his shoulder blades and somersaulted to his feet. Borgan stood in front of him, no worse for the wear. The move would have likely broken anyone else's knees and left them doubled over. It had only made Borgan angrier.

Jacen tried a new tactic, reaching out with the Force, he put out the lights before and aft that had illuminated the immediate tunnel. Ariela shrieked in fright, but Jacen could sense that Borgan hadn't flinched. Jacen had believed that he would gain some kind of advantage in the dark, but felt a fist whiz over his head and another clip him in the side as he realized, that with this small area to fight in, Borgan could just swing wildly and be pretty sure of hitting something. Jacen was now more positive he could avoid the unaimed blows and set himself to slip in between the punches, delivering Force aided blows that actually stunned Borgan a little, but didn't hurt him much.

Jacen was fatigued, but couldn't detect so much as a breath coming from Borgan. The giant was relentless, and Jacen soon found that he was back-pedaling. Wary of where Ariela was located, Jacen knew that she couldn't see what was happening and had no way of dodging a blow if Borgan's furious efforts came to close to her. Jacen rushed the monster hoping to somehow slow his brutal charge. A huge fist slammed down on Jacen's shoulder and his legs were unable to stand up under the blow. He went down hard on his back and rolled over on instinct as a huge boot crushed the floor next to him just missing his relatively slight frame. The Jedi scrambled back to his feet, but didn't rise. Instead he grabbed both of Borgan's huge knees, one in each arm, and with a great Force heave, lifted him off the ground. The move was swift and strong and Jacen could feel the violent collision throughout Borgan's body as his head struck the rock ceiling. The knees in Jacen's grasp went slightly limp, and the Jedi sprang back as the giant swung his huge wrecking balls of fists down as he slumped on his failing legs.

Jacen didn't waist time when he realized that Borgan was stunned, knowing that it wouldn't last more than a few moments. He reached back into the darkness to where he could sense Ariela was standing. His hand clamped onto her wrist and he yanked her off her feet as he pulled her past the human obstruction in the narrow passageway. Ariela screamed, as Jacen pulled her, not knowing who it was. She beat on his iron grip and tripped clumsily over unseen rocks and protrusions. In one smooth motion, Jacen lifted her into the air and draped her over his shoulder as he kept running as fast as the Force allowed him.

Ariela had figured out that this was Jacen and not Borgan by now, but it didn't improve her mood at all. "Put me down!" she screamed repeatedly. She pounded on Jacen's back relentlessly. Jacen wondered if she actually thought this was making him run faster or if she really cared whether or not she escaped.

Up ahead, Jacen sensed a major drop off, and he braced himself for the jump. "Hold on!" he warned as he leaped off into open space. Ariela screamed wildly as they fell about 20 meters before Jacen brought them to a fluttering stop at the bottom of the gorge. Jacen unceremoniously dumped the still very shaken Ariela onto the floor and walked back to the cliff face he had just descended. Jacen sensed a small electrical circuit in the area, he prodded it with the Force, and a light went on. There was a platform and pulley system rigged for a normal descent down the cliff, and Jacen went to work making sure that it wouldn't work for a very long time.

Jacen walked back over to where he had left Ariela and saw that she was struggling to rise. He bent over to help her up and received a vicious slap across the face. Jacen pulled back quickly and stood at a distance watching Ariela get to her feet after much effort. "You're welcome," Jacen said as he rubbed his red cheek.

"Thanks for nothing," she spat back. She tried to walk away, and her knee almost gave out as she braced herself against the wall. Jacen tuned his vision down to her left leg and saw that she had a few nasty rips in her pants, and a little bit of blood was showing through. She must have bumped her legs against the cave wall something awful when I was running, he thought to himself. He rushed over to help her. "What do you want?"

"I can help," he said and reached down to examine her upper left leg. As her reached out to touch her wounds, he fell back wards suddenly as Ariela's right leg snapped off a hard kick into his side.

"Don't touch me. You don't have permission, remember?"

Jacen didn't even bother apologizing, realizing that nothing he could say right now would help. He also noticed that she had lost her bag in the trip down the tunnel, probably adding a little to her sour mood. The two walked as far apart as the narrow tunnel allowed them, repelling each other like opposing magnets. They could see the small glow of the sub-rail ahead, and they didn't speak as they walked toward it. Jacen tried to take his mind off of the tension present and examined the rail ahead of them. It consisted of four cylinders that were ninety degrees apart from each other around a circle and were girded every ten or so meters by a large ring. The diameter of the tube that the four cylinders created was about four meters, allowing a three-meter wide train to easily travel the rails.

The pair entered the sub-rail tunnel at a right angle and had to pick a direction to walk. Jacen knew in which direction he wanted to go, and also knew that if Ariela wanted to walk in the other direction, her present mood would make it next to impossible to change her mind. For that reason, Jacen set off quickly in the appropriate direction, before Ariela could make her decision. Ariela paused only briefly, wanting to question his judgment, but didn't.

There was about a meter between the rail and the edge of the tunnel - sometimes more sometimes less. Refusing to let Jacen lead, Ariela squeezed her narrow shoulders between Jacen and the rocky wall, forcing them to walk abreast of each other, and forcing Jacen to expertly dodge each support ring they past in order to keep his left shoulder connected. Jacen knew that the above ground grav-rail made a sharp turn about a kilometer away from the complex, and he was hoping that this underground transit system made that same sharp turn. He hadn't told Ariela yet, but he hoped to board the next train that came by.

The silence was now over five minutes long and thick enough to cut with a vibro-blade. "I'm sorry," they both said, and the tension dissolved in an instant. The two escapees turned to face each other as they spoke and tried to suppress grins.

Jacen spoke first. "I'm sorry. I should have been more careful back there in the tunnel, it being pitch black and all."

"No," Ariela rebuked him, "you did fine. If it wasn't for you, Borgan would have tortured me for sure."

They both looked into each other's eyes and saw that all had been forgiven and said no more for a while as they continued walking. Jacen noticed that Ariela was suppressing a slight limp to the best of her ability, but didn't say anything, wanting her to bring up the topic so he didn't have to force himself upon her. He didn't have to wait long. "Can you really do something for my leg?"

They were approaching the beginning of the turn and there was a small alcove next to the rail where there was about one hundred square feet of free space. "Yes, I can," Jacen said as he walked into the small cave, "if you give me permission."

Ariela tried to frown at him, but couldn't. "You have permission," she said, "for now," she quickly added. There were lights about every 15 meters allowing Ariela to pick out a small stone to sit on as she stretched her bad left leg forward. Jacen knelt down next to her and examined the wounds. Through the cut pants he could see she had a few shallow cuts right above her knee that obviously made it painful to bend. There were also some deep bruises on her thigh.

"Wow," Jacen said, throwing bedside etiquette to the wind, "I'm really sorry."

"Forget it," she replied through clenched teeth as Jacen touched the wounds above her knee. "I'm sure Borgan could have done much worse." Ariela tried not to look as Jacen worked, and stared up at the ceiling. Soon she felt a very warm sensation working its way up her leg, and curiosity got the best of her. She looked down to see Jacen, with his eyes closed, holding his hand a few inches above her leg. The air between his hand and her leg was glowing red. She watched in amazement, as the cuts seemed to get shorter, the ends fusing together. Soon her wounds looked more like small scrapes than cuts. Ariela also noticed that the throbbing in her thigh had receded considerably.

Jacen opened his eyes and saw the gratitude in Ariela's face. "Feel better?"

"Much," she answered and tried to rise, but Jacen held her down gently.

"Not just yet. Let's rest for a while."

"But they'll be following us for sure."

Jacen shook his head slowly. "I don't think so, at least not right away. They know we're down here and there is nowhere we can go for now. Besides, you shouldn't walk on that leg for a while."

They lapsed into silence for a while until Ariela popped the question for which Jacen had been waiting for sometime now. "What is a Jedi?"

"Do you know how a solar panel works?"

Ariela looked confused. "I know what one is, but that's not quite the answer I was expecting."

"It's an analogy," he responded. "A star is a collection of super heated gasses combusting and under going fusion. You could say that that is how a star stays alive. This life produces an incredible amount of energy. Normally this energy simply radiates through the universe, occasionally heating a small world. A solar panel is an effort to harness this energy and turn it into useful work. The panel absorbs the solar radiation like a sponge, and through different methods, you can use that energy for a wide variety of tasks. Jedi are, in a sense, life energy panels. We absorb energy that living things produce and use it to perform special tasks. It is a lot more complicated than that, but that's it in a nut shell."

Ariela shrank back from Jacen a little. "You mean you are stealing life energy from me right now?"

"No, no, it's not like that," Jacen said, trying to quell her fears. He paused for a while, trying to explain it better. "When a solar panel isn't there, what happens? The light just hits the ground, right. When you operate a solar panel, do you make the sun any cooler? No. The sun is going to produce energy whether you use it or not. You can only use as much as the sun produces, and can't 'steal' anything. We call the life energy the Force, and it exists everywhere. It's there whether we choose to use it or not. So don't worry, I'm not stealing any life energy from you."

Ariela looked visibly relieved, but still confused. "So what exactly can you do?"

Jacen shrugged his shoulders. "I really don't know. I mean I know what I can do now, but as far as what I'm capable of doing - anything, I guess. But it all depends on my experience and strength with the Force. The gift to use the Force isn't given to everyone. It's hereditary. My uncle is a master and can do things with ease that I can't even imagine. My younger brother is incredibly strong with the Force, and while I have more experience with the Force, he can do everything better and with so much more ease than I can. It gets frustrating."

Ariela smiled at the small rivalry she could imagine between Jacen and his brother. Her smile disappeared as she contemplated her next question. "What do you do with your power? I mean are you some kind of ruler or something? Borgan said that you were the son of the head of state of the New Republic."

Jacen smiled at her fear of him. "I have as much authority over people as you do. Yes, you would think that the people with power should be the ones to rule. Survival of the fittest and all that, but that's not the way we like to do it. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. As Jedi, we understand that we have a huge responsibility to the rest of the universe to use our gift wisely. There are those who flaunt their power through evil plots of conquest, and they usually throw the whole galaxy into war. Jedi try to use their strength to better the goods of others. I guess we are kind of like protectors of the peace."

"So you weren't lying back in the alley," Ariela said with a suddenly downcast face. "It's your job to rescue me, and you're going to turn me over to the authorities once we're out of here."

Jacen felt like his heart had been torn out of his chest and stomped on. "No, not at all. I'm here because . . . I mean I'm rescuing you because . . . No I won't turn you over to the authorities," Jacen finally finished. "You're the victim here, not the criminal. I'm going to take you far away from here." Jacen paused as his statement brought to mind something he had been wondering. "Where are you from?"

Ariela smiled at the question. "What are you trying to say? You don't think a girl who can dance, fight, is an expert on art, and is the best thief this side of the boulder belt could come from Estassia? You're right. I come from another planet named Trinxon. I was born there and lived the first 15 years of my life there."

Jacen watched her pause in mid thought, obviously reliving those memories. He obviously knew that something traumatic had to happen in order for her to have ended up here working for Borgan and the Master. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"No," she said, "I haven't talked about this with anyone except Borgan, and he doesn't have a heart, so he doesn't count. My family was very poor by this planet's standards, but we didn't notice. My father wasn't rich, obviously, but he was very smart and resourceful. His problem was that he had an accident when he was young that left his face very disfigured, thus eliminating him from any chance at a mainstream job." Jacen nodded, understanding the editorial on today's society. "He still managed to get by, doing odd jobs for the few people who realized that beneath his scarred face was a very bright man.

"Finally, someone approached him and promised him a decent paying job if he did some analyzing and decoding for him. He had said he was a member of the local intelligence agency and that they simply wanted him to check their codes and programs for bugs. My dad accepted immediately, glad that he would be able to finally support his family. Well, he cracked their codes, fixed their programs and, if it had been an honest organization, made the company a lot of money. His first paycheck came in the form of three armed men. They shot my father on sight and killed my mother and younger brother. They would have killed me as well, but Borgan showed up. He says that he was just passing by and decided to check out the commotion. He promised to take care of me so that I would be able to take care of myself.

"I was a frightened 15-year-old kid who had just seen her entire family murdered, and I was very confused. I agreed to go with him, and you can guess what the next ten years of my life have been like. I have never been able to prove that Borgan had a hand in my family's death, and he vehemently denies it every time it comes up, but I find it too coincidental."

The two fell into silence again, not knowing how to follow up Ariela's story. "So, what do you have planned?"

Jacen saw a good opportunity to change the mood of the conversation and did so with pleasure. "We're going to catch a ride on the next train."

Ariela's mood changed, all right; it changed to one of utter disbelief. "Do you know how fast those trains travel?" she asked rhetorically. "And you just want to hop on?"

Jacen walked over to the rail system at the beginning of the curve. "No I don't know how fast they travel, but I do know that they have to slow down to go through this turn. It's a simple, dynamics slash electronics problem. In fact, it's a classic text book example. If an underground train car weighing about five tons travels through a 90-degree turn with a radius of curvature of about," Jacen squinted down the track, judging the curve, "oh, a radius of curvature of about 60 meters, find the maximum velocity the train can maintain and still keep a distance of at least ten centimeters from the side of the tunnel. Assume that the magnetic suspension supports the train with a factor of safety of about 1.75, and the gravity constant is," Jacen took a few small jumps, "about 9.5 meters per second squared. The distance between the train and the side of the tunnel is initially and uniformly half a meter." Jacen looked over at Ariela and saw that he had just spoken way over her head. He had been through the finest school system on Coruscant while she said that she had grown up poor. Borgan obviously had her trained since she had joined this gang, but not in advanced dynamics. Jacen hadn't enjoyed it much either, preferring his biology classes to the more technical studies that he was put through, but the problem he had outlined was fairly basic, and he had seen examples exactly like it in many of his text books. This problem was nothing compared to trying to calculate the flight path of a ship in hyperspace through a star system while trying to compensate for time distortion.

"It's really not that hard. The maximum velocity works out to be about 330 kph. So we don't have anything to worry about."

"What!!" Ariela screamed. "Over 300 kilometrs an hour! You think you can just jump onto the thing when it's going that fast? Besides, what if it weighs less than five tons? What if you're wrong?"

Jacen walked over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Listen, it doesn't matter how much it weighs. If you work out the equation, the weight cancels out. The magnetic field calibrates itself so that it is only strong enough to lift the weight of the train. If the train is lighter, then the field is weaker. Just try and trust me." Ariela calmed visibly. Something in Jacen's voice seemed to calm her. He was so gentle when he wanted to be that Ariela wondered how she could have ever been mad at him. "Do you trust me?" Ariela nodded mutely. "Good, now try to stand," Jacen said as he held her hand and pulled gently.

Ariela was a little shaky coming up off the rock, but found that her left leg was much more stable than it had been a few minutes ago. Ariela jumped slightly and looked up at Jacen with a look of approval. Before Jacen could react, she kissed him quickly on the cheek. "Thanks."

Jacen tried to force the redness in his cheeks down, but failed miserably. "Do you think you can walk now?" Jacen asked, changing the subject. Ariela nodded. "Can you run?"

"Sure," she replied, "but I don't think I can quite hit 330 yet. You're not that good of a doctor." She paused in thought. "Why do you ask?"

"We have company coming. They must have found another way down that cliff." Ariela and Jacen moved back out into the tunnel area and start to walk quickly. Sure enough, Ariela could hear voices coming from a ways behind them. She looked over her shoulder and saw that they had lights with them as well.

"There they are!" came the voices behind them. "Stop!" Blaster bolts came whizzing over their heads.

Jacen glanced over his shoulder. They were still over fifty meters behind him. Much better aim than storm troopers, he thought to himself. I don't need this. "Jacen, they're going to hit us."

"Not if I can help it." The next few shots veered into the ceiling of the tunnel or angled into the wall beside them. The bolts splashed against the rock, spraying the fleeing couple. Jacen flinched as the small rocks bit into his skin. Better than getting hit with the bolts, he thought.

Ariela had a better idea and slipped into the metal tunnel next to them. Jacen followed suit and saw now that they were in the turn, the support rings came more frequently and created an effective cage, protecting them from the firing of their enemies. The running turned into a hurdle race as they jumped over each ring support they came to. A few more shot were fired at them, but their pursuers didn't have a good angle, and the bolts sparked harmlessly off the rings.

A remarkably close shot caught Jacen's attention. The bolt skimmed past one of the magnetic repulsion cylinders and hit the wall. Jacen paused briefly as he regarded the explosion against the wall. The rock didn't explode on impact. The bolt just kind of evaporated on contact. The bolt must have become depolarized as it skimmed over the magnetic repulsion cylinder, which means . . . Jacen ran over to one of the side cylinders and held out his hand to it. "We got more company," he said.

"The people behind us have reinforcements?"

"Not exactly. The train is coming."

Ariela made a move to jump out of the track, but Jacen grabbed her wrist. "No, stay in here. This is how I planned on getting on the train in the first place. I just didn't plan on having to do it while being fired at. Let's try and get out of this curve first."

The end of the curve was just ahead, and Jacen stopped when they reached it. Ariela looked incredibly nervous. "Don't worry," Jacen said for the umpteenth time that afternoon, "the train is still a few kilometers away. The magnetic field isn't that strong yet."

"A couple kilometers doesn't mean much at 330 kph. It could get here-"

"A kilometer every 10.9091 seconds. I know." Jacen closed his eyes and concentrated. "Get on my back."

"On your back?" Ariela asked, not sure if she should be appalled by the idea or not.

"I don't have time to argue. If you trust me, get on my back." She did as she was told and within seconds they were floating half a meter above the bottom magnetic repulsion cylinder. Jacen reached out to the train and began to push. It was still a kilometer and a half away and he couldn't feel it that strongly through the Force, but the floating pair began to drift backwards slowly.

Ariela shrieked as the two pursuers came into view. "Hey, stop!" they yelled from about 50 meters away. Ariela ducked behind Jacen's head as the two men fired. They missed, but not by much. Jacen was coasting backwards more swiftly now, and couldn't break his concentration to worry about the blaster shots. With the train about ten seconds away, it left too much time for the two men to hit them, especially now that they were back on a straight away. Still pushing with his mind, Jacen changed his focus only slightly, and pushed off the two thugs. The men were totally unprepared for the shove and tumbled backwards. The two gunmen scrambled back to their feet again and prepared to fire.

One of the major selling points for magnetic propulsion is the incredible sound reduction over normal transits. There are no motors, no moving parts, and no points of contact or friction. The only sound the very fast trains produce is the incredible wind noise of near sonic travel. But that sound is left far behind the train, giving no warning as to its coming. Ariela watched as the train came shooting around the corner like an incredible fast eel getting ready to strike. Jacen could feel the train closing fast and knew that the two men were standing right in the middle of the track, completely oblivious to their fatal position. "Don't watch!" Jacen screamed to the woman on his back. The one thug was just drawing a bead on the pair when the train hit them, not slowing in the least and blowing them both apart like a pile of leaves in a wind storm.

Ariela screamed and almost jumped off of Jacen's back, not wishing the same fate, but they were moving close to 100 kph now, and she held on. Like the magnetic repulsion that supported the train, Jacen's strength increased exponentially as the train got closer. From Ariela's point of view it looked like the train was slowing down, while she knew that they were really speeding up. As the train came within a few meters, Ariela shuddered at the blood that had streaked the front of the train like racing stripes on a swoop.

Jacen pushed with all his might, and they collided with the train at a difference of about ten kilometers an hour. Jacen absorbed the brunt of the blow, and it broke his concentration. The nose of the train was slightly cone-shaped, like a giant missile. Jacen was straddling the nose and scrambling for a handhold on the top of the train. "Climb over me!" Jacen yelled over the howl of the wind. Ariela understood that he couldn't support both of them, and she was high on his back with a better angle to reach the top of the train. There was a lip, and her fingers wrapped around it. "Watch your head!" Jacen screamed as she let the wind flip her body around so she was facing forward on the train with her body flailing behind her. The top magnetic cylinder was only half a meter above the top of the train, and only a dozen centimeters above her head.

Jacen was just getting a grip when they both felt the train begin to accelerate dramatically. The train had just fully left the turn and was resuming its normal cruising velocity of 750 kph. The shock of the acceleration had caused Jacen to slip, and the nose of the train was now aimed at his chest. Ariela watched in horror as the majority of his weight now dangled below the middle of the train, and the wind drag on his body threatened to pull him under. Jacen fell further and further until Ariela could only see his forearms grasping desperately at the smooth surface of the train. She screamed as she watched Jacen's arms disappear from sight.

"No! Come back!" But Jacen couldn't hear her. The wind stung her eyes, but the blue orbs would have produce tears anyway.

Underneath the train, Jacen was in a very precarious position. He had managed to slip his fingers inside a crack between the nose cone and the main body of the front car, but his feet had no anchor point. His legs kept slipping down, straddling the center magnetic cylinder. He yanked them up, each time just barely avoiding the next ring brace as they sped by him with incredible frequency at 750 kph. Jacen took a deep breath and tried to attack this situation under control of the Force. The Jedi felt himself grow weightless, and his legs no longer had any problem staying glued the bottom. The crack in which he had his fingers encircled the entire train, and Jacen slowly worked his way sideways out from under the speeding transport. His body was now flat against the side of train, vary aware of the metal tunnel whizzing by him with dizzying speed.

Jacen passed a window on his trip up the side of the train and took a brief moment to look inside. There weren't very many people in the front car, but Jacen managed to lock eyes with a young boy mesmerized by streaks the few lights in the tunnel made. Jacen could tell that the boy didn't quite know what to make of this person clinging to the outside of the underground train, but it didn't take long before the boy was up out of his seat, yelling and pointing toward the window. As Jacen kept moving, he saw the flustered boy tugging at an older woman that must have been his mother. Jacen was out of view in a few seconds, and he could imagine the parent saying, "Of course there was a man outside the train, dear. Now go sit back down, and be quiet."

Jacen reached the top of the three-meter tall train and angled his arm over the edge, making contact with another person's arm. Ariela was so startled that she actually let go with that arm. Jacen was quick to grab hold of her wrist and haul the wayward appendage back to its anchor point. Ariela slid over on the train and made room for Jacen as he worked his way on top.

"What happened?!" she cried above the wind.

"I decided to take the scenic route."

"I thought you were gone."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you."

Ariela kicked him and frowned, but the upside-down smile didn't last long, and it soon righted itself. "Do you know where this train goes?" Jacen asked.

Ariela shook her head. "Not a clue, but I hope it gets there soon. My arms are getting very tired."

"Let's see if we can't do something about this wind," Jacen said and began constructing a wind block with the Force. Soon, the screaming wind became no more than a stiff breeze. Ariela began to visibly relax, but Jacen gestured up. "Don't forget we have to stay low."

Ariela nodded and tried to make herself comfortable. "Do think we can get inside?"

Jacen shook his head. "I doubt it. It shouldn't matter. At this speed it shouldn't take too long to get anywhere."

***

The Master and Borgan watched as Herink walked into the room. "What did you find?"

Herink cleared his throat, knowing that he was the bearer of bad news. "Just pieces, sir."

The master leaned forward in his chair. "Pieces?" he asked for clarification, making it sure that Herink knew that he wasn't happy to have to ask for it.

"Yes, just pieces of what I assume where once people. They where blown apart like nothing I've ever seen before."

"How much was there?" Borgan asked.

"I'd say at least two people but maybe more if they were minced so fine that we couldn't find them. It must have been the train, sir."

"Are you sure?" the Master asked, his voice dripping with hateful sarcasm. He turned to Borgan. "It had to be your men. They are the only ones incompetent enough to meet such a fate. No Jedi would be caught unaware by a huge, noisy train." Borgan swallowed the rebuke, thinking this was a bad time to mention how quiet the trains actually were. "Do you know where this train his heading?"

"It is going Forhienge, sir," Herink said, "500 kilometers away."

"I suggest you two get moving. Our young lady and her Jedi friend are moving away from us at a very high rate of speed." Borgan paused. Did he really mean that they had jumped onto the train? But then if Herink had said they weren't down there, where else could they be? "I'm not used to having the people I capture, escape within an hour."

Borgan nodded and moved toward the door. "Yes, Father."

****

Chapter 7

After almost forty-five minutes the train finally came to a halt. Both Jacen and Ariela didn't know if they could have held on for another minute. The train was so long that it had to move forward several times in order to unload all of its passengers into the underground station. Jacen tried to divert the people's attention as they slid down off the top of the train, but they got a few double takes. Jacen was glad that they weren't on Coruscant. The entire city planet looked the same, and there were no major divisions that allowed you to know exactly were you were relative to any other point. This planet had separate provinces, and each city was separated from each other by expanses of beautiful countryside, allowing each area to retain its individuality and a place on the map.

For all the uniqueness that existed on Estassia, Jacen still didn't have a clue as to where they were. "Where are we?" he voiced his thoughts to his companion.

Ariela was looking around the crowd and shook her head. "I don't know yet. Let's go top side." The couple glided through the crowd with Jacen leading the way, giving a few gentle, mental nudges to some of the more lethargic pedestrians.

As was most of Estassia, the crowd here was exclusively human. Estassia was so elitist, that it hadn't opened its arms to the galaxy, and the galaxy likewise ignored it. Jacen didn't feel any xenophobia or racism amongst the people, but it was difficult to tell with there only being one race present. Jacen knew that if this planet were to enter the New Republic, they would have to be able to accept New Republic heroes like Ackbar and Chewbacca. Jacen made a mental note to bring this up in his report to his mother. In all the activity of the past few days, Jacen tried not to forget why he was here.

There were several rising stairways that carried the patrons to the surface, and Jacen and Ariela soon found themselves squinting at the late afternoon sun. Jacen took a look around and was pleased. The city was a little smaller than Rencrin, where his hotel was waiting for him, but the same level of sophistication. It was right between Coruscant and Yavin IV. Jacen laughed at his mental analogy. Those two places defined either end of the spectrum, kind of like saying that the number was between zero and infinity. While those were the only two worlds that Jacen had extensive knowledge of, they were in reality, good bookends for this planet. If Coruscant and Yavin IV were extremes, this planet was definitely smack in the middle of normal. The streets were located at ground level, and while there were towering buildings, they were not omnipresent, and were generally, centrally located in a big city. The buildings around the downtown area decreased in size until they dissolved into a cozy residential section, that, in turn, evaporated into a rolling countryside with a patchwork landscape of farms.

Ariela was also surveying the scenery as the two of them began walking in a random direction supported by the flow of people. "I've been here before," she said, searching her memory. Jacen thought about suggesting they check out the local museum to jog her memory, but decided against it. Ariela kept up her survey until her eyes wandered across a billboard advertising a local sports team. "Ah," she said, "this is Forhienge. It's the capital city of the province just to the west of where we were."

Jacen nodded at her assessment of their location, not really able to do anything else. The billboard that had jogged her memory was advertising a professional smashball team. On a planet where everyone is a perfectionist, Jacen thought, I wonder what the athletes are like. "So where do we go now?"

Ariela didn't hesitate in her answer. "Far, far away. Trinxon would be good."

"Okay," Jacen said, "where do you want to get a spaceship?"

Ariela looked at him with a look that said, "I thought you were rescuing me." Out loud she said, "Don't you have a spaceship?"

"Yes," Jacen said, holding back all the sarcastic replies that came to mind, "but it is back in Rencrin." Jacen now regretted that he had come in a diplomatic shuttle and not the ship he shared with his sister. Jaina and Lowbacca had programmed a very sophisticated autopilot in the vehicle, and Jacen could summon it with the homing devices that Jaina had placed in his lightsaber handles. His mother, however, had put the kibosh on that plan, saying that she didn't want her son giving the people a bad example of New Republic technology. Granted, the ship looked like it was slapped together by a couple of students who stole parts from abandoned space ships, but, well, that is exactly how it was built. But as far as advanced technology, it was probably the best ship of its size in the fleet, with its only competition coming from the Falcon. Regardless of whether he had flown it here, he didn't have either of his lightsabers with him, so it was a moot point.

"Oh," Ariela said, feeling a little stupid for not realizing that herself. "Do you have any money with you?"

"No," Jacen said, "and I know that you don't have any money on you." Ariela blushed at Jacen's unintentional reference to the fact that not only did he know exactly what things Ariela had on her, he also knew what she looked like without them. "The Master said that he was wide spread. Certainly he would have a branch of his terror campaign in the capital city of the neighboring province."

Ariela nodded as if she was remembering her last visit here better. "Yes, yes there is. In fact, I think it's just a few blocks away." Ariela picked up their walking pace, and Jacen fell in behind the motivated woman. Jacen noticed a very lively step in Ariela's stride, and he knew that she was breathing free air for the first time in a while. Jacen was glad that he could bring such happiness to the former captive, but he wondered what was going to happen to her now. She mentioned going back to her home planet of Trinxon, but she had already told Jacen that her family was dead, and although the planet was probably several million kilometers away, it was a bit too close to Borgan and his goons for Jacen's liking. That was where Borgan had caught her. Jacen didn't doubt that Ariela would go with him back to Coruscant, but then what? Jacen was constantly going on diplomatic missions for his mother, and the remnants of the Empire always kept him and his sister busy. Would Ariela just join in the fray? What about an independent life style? Jacen knew that you could be quite successful in this galaxy on your own if you had the know-how. Ariela definitely had the brains to survive, and she could easily take care of herself if their rooftop battle was any indication of her prowess.

What about the two of them staying together? Jacen couldn't deny the way he felt about her, and he had caught her staring into his eyes on more than one occasion. To Jacen, it seemed too much like a storybook ending. You rescue the damsel in distress, she melts into your arms, and you both live happily ever after. Jacen knew it didn't happen like that. But what if . . .

"It's right up there," Ariela said, interrupting Jacen's pondering and pointing toward a rundown looking pawnshop.

Jacen looked at the front, and knowing what it actually held made it look very out of place. It also sent warning bells off in his mind. He grabbed at Ariela's wrist, a motion that had become all too common between the two of them. Jacen's caution or confidence verses Ariela's over-confidence or lack of trust. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" Jacen absorbed the look of confusion that Ariela gave him. Hadn't they just reached a game plan a few minutes ago? "I mean, aren't these the people we're trying to run from?" Jacen tried to clarify.

Ariela smiled at him mischievously. "Don't you trust me?" she asked coyly, exchanging roles. Jacen responded with a deep sigh, but motioned with his arm for Ariela to lead. She walked up confidently to the front door of the shady establishment and pushed the manual door open with a practiced gesture. Jacen heard a faint chime go off in the rear of the building and a distant call that someone would be right with them. Jacen eased the door closed behind him and was awe struck with the montage of absolute junk that struck his eyes. There were fake, cracked, antique lamps and vases, extremely inauthentic figurines from some fictional culture, several ornamental weapons that Jacen doubted would stand up to a piece of paper, and thousands of other assorted trinkets.

A fat, bearded man made his appearance behind a counter in the back of the store. Jacen's head stuck out above most of the shelves, and the man addressed him. "See anything you like?" Jacen was about to think of a reply when Ariela walked from behind a shelf and up to the counter. The man's mood changed quickly as he caught sight of her. "Ah, I see you two are here on more professional business," the man said aloud and then lowered his voice, but Jacen could still hear him, "or is this personal?"

Ariela smiled back at him, keeping her good humor. "No, Trent, this is strictly business, but thanks for prying."

"How was the last one?" he asked, not closing the subject.

"He was all talk."

"And this one?"

Ariela looked at Jacen who had picked up a clay mug and was trying to put the pieces back together as it had broken instantly. "He's shown some potential, but we'll have to see."

Trent picked his voice up and projected it toward the front of the store where Jacen was fiddling with his accidental jigsaw puzzle. "You break it; you buy it."

Jacen held the five big pieces up for the store clerk to see, and they floated out of his hands and formed a perfect mug, spinning slowly in the air six centimeters above his hand. Jacen reached out to it slowly, grabbed the handle, and placed it back on the shelf. Trent turned back to Ariela. "Yea, I'd say he has a little potential."

Jacen walked over to the counter, and behind him the mug collapsed back into pieces. "We've got a new pilot, and Borgan wants me to show him the ropes. We just came in on the sub-rail, and I wanted to show him our ships here and maybe take him for a spin. I thought maybe I could borrow an air car to zip down to the port."

Trent nodded. "Sure, babe. There's a few out back. Take your pick."

"Thanks Trent," Ariela said and walked past the counter toward the back door. Jacen moved to follow, but Trent put a restrictive hand on his shoulder and the Jedi stopped.

"Don't be too rough with her, understand?"

Jacen mimicked the man's grip on the clerk's own shoulder and squeezed with a Force vise grip. "Don't worry, buddy, I'm always gentle with people I care about." Jacen observed the pain on the man's face for a brief second and then let go. From the front of the store came a distinct crash. "Cheap mug," Jacen said, and walked after Ariela, leaving the man massaging his bruised shoulder.

Ariela was already inspecting one of the cars when Jacen got outside. "You know how to operate one of these things?" Jacen asked.

"Don't you trust me?" Jacen bit his tongue at the expected retort and got into the passenger's seat as his female counter part climbed in behind the driving console. The car hummed to life and rose a few dozen centimeters off the ground. Ariela moved her fingers in a confident pattern of instructions and the car moved forward gently. She expertly swung the car down through the alleyway, and in a few moments they were out on the street, moving at a decent clip.

Jacen looked at Ariela tried not to let himself get caught up in her optimistic outlook on the situation. Apparently Ariela knew what Jacen was thinking. "Relax, hon," she said, throwing the endearment at him to break his resolve, "Trent didn't suspect a thing and Borgan is 500 kilometers away. In a few minutes we'll be millions of kilometers away."

Jacen tried to relax, but the feeling that they were being watched was still nagging at him.

***

Trent listened to Ariela's words of encouragement over the small speaker in the back room of the pawnshop and chuckled to himself. He reached over to a switch on the radio to change channels. His arm quivered as a bolt of pain shot down from his shoulder. That little punk had really done something to his arm. Trent changed channels and waited for confirmation. "They're on their way," he spoke into a microphone.

"Good," Borgan said from the other end of the line. "We're waiting for them." Borgan put the com unit down and looked at Herink next to him. The smaller man was looking through a pair of microbinoculars.

"Here they come," Herink said and offered the vision enhancers to Borgan.

Borgan declined, accepting Herink's word. "Are your men in place now?" Herink nodded. "Just remember, there is no need to take either of them alive."

"I understand," Herink replied.

***

The air car glided smoothly up the ramp toward the spaceport. There was quite a bit of traffic, but Ariela steered the vehicle into a private section of the complex. They pulled up to a separate building from the main section of the space port, and Jacen saw that there were several different private sections owned by other wealthy individuals or organizations. This system was much more organized than on most planets where people could land just about anywhere, and the skies were always filled with unauthorized space craft. Here each ship received clearance from the main spaceport and a trajectory that they should follow when leaving the atmosphere to minimize interference with other crafts.

Ariela parked the car in a designated area, and the two of them stepped out and approached the front of the building. The structure wasn't very large. It was connected to a medium sized hanger where Jacen guessed about two or three relatively small ships were housed. "All we have to do is say 'Hi, we're here to take out one of the ships,' and they should say, 'Okay, take one of the ships in the hanger.'"

Jacen looked at her with disbelief. "That sounds a little too easy."

Ariela shook her head. "Borgan runs a tight ship. He doesn't want to have to bog everyone down with a whole bunch of odd regulations. There are plenty of security measures, such as bioscans, but I shouldn't set off any alarms, and as long as your with me, they won't suspect a thing."

They climbed the stairs and entered through glass double doors. Jacen saw that the main room of this building was basically just a waste of space. It was likely these private sections of the spaceport were built in a cookie cutter fashion where everyone was the same. Most other businesses had to cater to special guests and visitors. This wasn't the case with Borgan's group, and the main room was basically empty except for a refresher unit in the corner, a small restaurant, and two men with blasters firing at the two people who had just entered the building.

Jacen's senses had been alert, doubting that they were going to get away this easily, but Ariela was caught totally off guard as Jacen shoved her violently to the left and he rolled to the right. Ariela was quick to recover, and managed to compose her self into a ball and rolled away as two bolts of energy disintegrated the doors they had just walked through. She flipped out of her roll and came up behind a support pillar just as another shot exploded into a window behind her.

Jacen dove to his hands and vaulted himself over the second shot of his assassin landing right next to him. The goon didn't bother with the blaster at close range and whipped out a vibro blade. Jacen locked his hand on the wrist with the weapon, and the two men grappled. The other thug saw that Ariela had good cover behind the pillar and turned his attention to the other combatants. He saw that Jacen and his partner were locked in close combat, and he took a careful aim at the pair, liking the fifty-fifty chance of his hitting his target. The chance was actually much less than that as Jacen sensed the shot coming and spun his opponent around as a shield. The bolt of energy tore into the betrayed thug's back and still had a bit of energy as it passed all the way through his body and smashed Jacen in the chest. Jacen flew back a couple meters, stunned.

The man who had fired the wayward shot took aim again, but Ariela had bolted from her cover when she had seen that she was no longer the center of attention. As the man fired again, Ariela delivered a flying kick to the center of his back. The gunman's arms flew up as he fell, and his shot went high as he hit the ground. The man flipped over onto his back, and Ariela kicked the gun out of his hands as it came to bare. The man tried to scramble to his feet, but she swept his legs and clipped him hard on his head with her elbow. His head went foggy and he wasn't able to catch himself as his head rebounded off the thinly carpeted floor. His body slumped, as he slipped under.

Ariela looked over at Jacen and saw that he was getting up. "Let's go!" she screamed.

Jacen was rising when his eyes went wide. "Ariela!" She turned and saw that Borgan had come into the room. Her initial shock that the monster had been here waiting for them disabled her from any escape routine. Jacen saw the blaster of the man he had been fighting lying nearby, and he beckoned to it with his hand. He got to his feet as the gun flew into his hand. He swung it over onto Borgan. The big man was on his knees so he and Ariela were the same height. Jacen tried not to laugh as the giant tried to hide behind Ariela's slight frame. Jacen found it particularly easy to dispel the laughter when he focused on Borgan's huge forearm that was across Ariela's throat.

"Put your weapon down, boy."

"I think not. Stop hiding behind a woman. It doesn't suit you. Step out from behind her, and I'll give you a chance at a rematch."

"I don't think so," Borgan said with a smile on his face. "I believe I have the upper hand here. I could kill her and still use her for an effective shield."

"What shield?" Jacen asked without a hint of sarcasm.

"Don't kid yourself, Jedi. You don't have the balls to shoot through your girlfriend just to take me out."

"With my eyes closed," Jacen disagreed with a voice like ice as he thumbed the power setting to maximum.

Borgan had never known fear before. He didn't like it very much. Herink saved him. "Jacen, behind you!" Ariela managed as Borgan's forearm had gone slack.

Jacen had been square with Borgan, but now he turned his body 90 degrees and swung his right arm holding the blaster 180 as he fired. Herink had aimed right between Jacen's shoulder blades and had fired just as Jacen started to turn. His shot flew parallel with Jacen's outstretched arm and shoulders, searing a huge gash in his shirt. Jacen's arm didn't waiver as the bolt passed within microns of ripping his flesh off. The Jedi's shot was true on target and tore the blaster from Herink's grasp.

Ariela screamed again, and Jacen turned his attention away from Herink. Instead of turning his body back around, Jacen merely turned his head and lifted his left arm toward Borgan. He let go of the blaster in his right hand, and it traveled the width of his wing span into his waiting left hand. He was too late because when he brought the weapon to bare, Borgan was dragging Ariela outside through a side door. Jacen was about to give chase, when he sensed Herink charging him from the side. Jacen was still turned 90 degrees away from him. With the blaster in his left hand, away from the rushing Herink, Jacen brought the weapon down, thumbed the power to stun, and shot from his left hip. Herink was a meter away when Jacen fired, and the shot took him full in the chest. The thug was lifted off his feet and fell hard on his shoulder blades, not to get up for a while.

Jacen turned back in the direction that Borgan had taken Ariela and gave belated chase. Through the door, Jacen found himself between the main building and the hanger. Jacen crept cautiously, knowing that there weren't too many places to which Borgan could run. To Jacen's left was the front of the space port which was bound to be swarming with people and to his right was the wide open air field, offering no cover whatsoever. Jacen thought he heard a noise coming from the hanger, so he walked straight ahead to the door on the side of the building. Jacen opened the door and nearly got his head smashed into a pulp as he fell and rolled forward under a tremendous swinging pipe. Jacen complete two full somersaults before he came up and turned to face Borgan. The man was holding a large coolant pipe that measured one and a half meters long and eight centimeters wide. Jacen wasn't even sure if he would have been able to fit his hand around the thing, but Borgan was holding it like it was a short sword. Jacen had little time to contemplate the situation when Borgan charged him. Jacen took a quick step back and found himself up against a spaceship. He ducked at the last second, and Borgan punched a huge hole in the metal above Jacen's head. The Jedi scrambled out from underneath the giant as he tried to wrestle the pipe out of the ship.

Jacen looked about the hanger. It was square building, 30 meters to a side, with two ships inside that took up about a third the hanger. Jacen saw Ariela slumped in a corner and with a quick, Force scan, sighed as he sensed that she was just unconscious. He also saw the pile of pipes where Borgan had apparently found his weapon. Jacen summoned one of the smaller pipes, half a meter shorter and a couple centimeters thinner than the pipe Borgan had now freed from the ship.

Borgan turned toward his adversary, seeing that Jacen now had a weapon, and smiled slowly. The big man twirled his pipe in front of him briefly, going under his left arm, around his back, and back around his other side into his right hand. Jacen swallowed slowly, realizing that Borgan was no slouch in formal combat. Jacen had entered several swordsmanship contests all over the galaxy and had always won, and he always felt confident that he walked into each situation with the most skill, but he'd never met anyone who was even a fourth as strong as Borgan. His bulk didn't slow him down or encumber his movements either. Borgan charged again, but instead of falling back or standing his ground, Jacen met the charge with a rush of his own. Jacen held his weapon high, obviously going for the taller man's head. Borgan repositioned his grip to meet the blow and issue one of his own. At the last second, Jacen sidestepped and dropped his shoulders. Borgan's swing sailed through air as Jacen was now beside the giant instead of in front, and Jacen swung full into Borgan's gut. To Jacen's credit, the swing stopped Borgan's momentum, but to the big man's credit, he didn't even grunt.

Jacen cursed silently to himself. If he had his lightsaber with him, he could have just cut his opponent in half. Jacen had kept his charge going past Borgan and they turned to face each other again. Borgan was smiling. "Is that the best you've got, Jedi?" Jacen saw through the last attack sequence and realized that Borgan had let his defenses slip on purpose, allowing Jacen to see how futile this battle was. Jacen had other ideas.

The two walked together slowly, weaving their crude weapons in front of them so their opponent wouldn't know where the attack would be coming from. Borgan attacked first using the rotating pipe in his grasp to come down on Jacen from above. Jacen had kept his pipe high on his body, knowing that any real attack from his tall adversary would come from above. The Jedi positioned his pipe at a 45-degree angle with the ground, rebounding the attack away from his body. Jacen let the impact shoot his weapon across his body and returned the pipe in a backhand swipe aimed at Borgan's ribs. Borgan's initial blow had deflected wide and low, and he brought his pipe back in and up, knocking Jacen's attack high, so the pipe swept centimeters in front of Borgan's face.

After the two attacks and parries, both weapons were now at their respective owners' shoulders and in position for a strong forehand swing. Both men unloaded their attack with incredible ferocity, their arms snapping taunt like durasteel cables on a buckling suspension bridge. Borgan had half a meter on his opponent, he weighed almost 150 kilograms more, and his weapon was a half meter longer and over twice as heavy as Jacen's. Jacen had the power of the Force. Borgan's weapon was blasted from his hands and his incredible bulk was thrown backwards from the impact. Jacen stood calmly with his pipe bent and nearly sheared in half.

Borgan got up very slowly, not hurt, but incredibly cautious. Jacen tossed his now very warm weapon aside. "Is that the best you've got," Jacen said coolly. Jacen had played his cards correctly, and now Borgan was furious. Throwing caution to the wind, the monster bull rushed Jacen. The Jedi remained calm and dropped to one knee. Borgan's fists swiped the air above Jacen's head, and the younger man placed his hands on Borgan's waist and rolled backwards, translating Borgan's forward momentum into rotational motion. The giant flew ungracefully through the air and crashed into shelving which had until now held a wide assortment of tools.

Borgan picked up an electro-spaning wrench and hurled it at Jacen. The Jedi deftly caught the speeding projectile and flipped it back at the prone figure. The wrench flew like a bullet into Borgan's chest, surely cracking a few titanium coated ribs. For the first time during the fight Borgan registered pain. He also realized that he was way out of his league. With a feint toward Jacen, Borgan pivoted and ran toward Ariela. The large man ran past one of the ships in the hanger, which was undergoing repairs and was jacked up. Jacen shoved at the jack with the Force and the nose of the ship came crashing down right on top of the running Borgan, pinning him to the ground. For all of the metal monster's strength, he was unable to budge the several ton spaceship.

Jacen ran over to him, careful to keep his distance, tried to figure out how long it would take to knock him out, and simply decided for time's sake, he would leave him how he was. Jacen scooped up the still unconscious Ariela and ran back out of the building. He paused briefly and gave a mock salute back toward the pinned giant. "Be seeing you."

"In Hell," the grunting man responded.

"Sorry," Jacen apologized, "I plan on going in the other direction." Jacen ran out of the large door to the hanger and took a survey of the ships out on the airfield. He didn't recognize any of them. He finally settled on a medium sized ship that looked to be ready for take off. He carried Ariela up the lowered entryway, and a brief search located him small crew quarters where he laid her gingerly on a bed. He raced back to where he had seen the cockpit and settled into the chair, trying to familiarize himself with the controls. He raised the outside door and signaled the flight controller for immediate take off. He was given a priority departure and left within thirty seconds, following the designated coordinates that had been fed to his nav computer. "Just a few more minutes, Ariela," he said, as much to himself as to the woman asleep in the bunk.

***

Herink came into the hanger a few minutes after Jacen had left. He took one look at Borgan pinned beneath the ship and knew things were not looking up. "Give me a second and I'll get that thing off you, sir."

"Never mind about me," Borgan huffed, "I can get a service droid to get this thing off me. Go after them," he said, and gestured to the sky where Jacen had just flown. "Take my ship. And Herink," Borgan added, halting the man who had already started toward the air field, "either come back and tell me that they are dead, or don't come back at all."

Herink swallowed, realizing the implications of his assignment - no room for failure. He was glad that Borgan had told him to take his personal ship. It was the ship that they had flown in from Rencrin and it was the fastest and most heavily armored on the planet. The ship was highly polished black with an ultra friction resistant coating. It was the perfect camouflage for space fighting. It was shaped like a triangle with the wings swept back and quad ion engines located two under each wing. A few minutes later, Herink was in hot pursuit of the runaways.

****

Chapter 8

Jacen sensed that Ariela was waking up as they were leaving the atmosphere. "In here," Jacen spoke up, giving Ariela a voice to guide her into the cockpit. Ariela nearly tripped into the cockpit and slumped into the copilot's chair. "Headache?" Jacen asked, knowing the answer. Ariela nodded. "May I?" Jacen asked as he reached a hand out for her head. She nodded again. He gently clamped into the top of her head with his thumb and middle fingers massaging her temples. He let the Force flow through his hand and clear Ariela's jumbled mind. He could feel her mood brighten as he pulled his hand away.

Ariela looked at him with the sparkle back in her eyes. "I'm going to have to start calling you Dr. Jacen." She looked out the forward view screen as the dark blue of the atmosphere faded to black. Slowly the stars showed themselves against the darkening background. "It's beautiful."

Jacen paused with his hands over the controls to take in the view. He had known way too many people who had died in the awful vacuum of space, to think of it as beautiful, but Jacen had to agree, sitting next Ariela, as they left their troubles behind, the view did kind of hold some peaceful solitude the two of them could now enjoy together. "Where are we going?" Jacen asked, already having his mind made up that they were going back to Coruscant. "You've never been out of this system, have you?" Ariela shook her head. "I think you'll like Coruscant."

Ariela nodded at the idea, but her eyes fell before she spoke. "Yes, but I think we better go to Trinxon."

Jacen struggled with what to say next. She obviously had a strong connection with her home planet that she wasn't ready to sever, no matter how much it would cost her to stay. "Ariela you have to realize that you will never be safe from these people until you go far away from them."

"Jacen," she said, her voice very neutral, "I'd love to come with you back to Coruscant, but you stole a Planet Hopper."

"So?" Jacen asked, not seeing her point. Ariela kept her mouth closed, letting Jacen figure it out for himself. "All I have to do is program the coordinates of Coruscant into the nav computer, and it will plot us a course and give us an estimated time of the trip." Jacen did this and blinked several times at the output. "Seven thousand years is a little longer than had I expected."

Ariela put her hand on Jacen's arm. "Dear," she said as calmly as she could, "you stole a Planet Hopper. They don't have hyperdrives."

A million curses raced through Jacen's mind as he realized his carelessness. The curses repeated themselves as he saw a red light come to life on the control panel. "We've got company," he said to Ariela. "It looks like Borgan still isn't ready to let us leave. Which way to Trinxon?" Ariela pointed to a small blue and green planet in the distance. As Jacen looked at it he saw several small brownish lumps floating between him and the planet. Scanning his equipment and several maps that were available to him via the flight computer he defined the unknown objects. "An asteroid field! We have to fly through an asteroid field to get there. Can we go over or under it?"

Ariela shook her head. "It's a semi-spherical field. They call it the boulder belt. You didn't notice it when you came into the system because all hyperspace traffic is routed through the holes in the top and bottom of the field. Unfortunately for inter-planetary travel, the orbits of Estassia and Trinxon are very nearly parallel, so you have to go through the belt. They have constructed several electromagnetic tunnels through the belt to make travel easier."

As they got nearer to the belt, Jacen could see what she was talking about. The tunnels themselves were invisible, but Jacen watched as the small asteroids, or boulders, as Ariela had called them, flowed over the electromagnetic field like water flowing perpendicular to a pipe. Jacen looked at his sensors and saw that whoever was chasing them was gaining quickly, and Jacen was pushing the Planet Hopper to its limit. From what Jacen could see, they were going to reach the belt right about the same time that their pursuer was going to catch them. "We're going to cut this close, sweetie," Jacen said as he made sure to keep the ship moving side to side so that whoever was chasing them couldn't get a long range weapon's lock on them. The endearments that the two of them were throwing at each other seemed to come more easily during these times of tension.

As they drew near the tunnel, Jacen had a sudden insight. "I don't like this at all."

"What?" Ariela asked as Jacen avoided yet another potential missile lock.

"We're supposed to go through that tunnel and whoever's chasing us knows it. That tunnel is a couple thousand kilometers long, and while we'll be through it in a minute or so, he's going to know exactly where we are during that minute. He won't even need to get a weapon's lock. If he just fires a MIRV into the tunnel he's bound to hit us."

"So what do you want to do about it?" Ariela asked, fearful that she knew what he was thinking.

"My dad keeps bragging to me about how quickly he can do the famed Kessel Run, which involves skirting the Maw and then navigating a sparse asteroid field for about four hours straight. I've never even tried it. I thought I should get a little practice with asteroid fields before I did."

"Please," Ariela said, "you don't need to do this to impress me, dear."

"Hey, honey, I'm doing this to save our lives."

***

Behind them, Herink was smiling as they approached the tunnel. He no longer wasted time trying to get a solid lock on the ship. In a few moments he would be in range for beam weapons, besides once they got in the tunnel, it would be like shooting moncril in a fuel drum. As Herink flexed his fingers around the turbo laser firing levers, he watched as right before the tunnel, the not so nimble Planet Hopper veered to the right and into the asteroid field. "Blast them!" Herink swore, as his fingers played out the curse and fired toward the desperate ship. The energy rays sprang out from the black ship, but found only space rock to hit as there was already several of the large asteroids blocking Herink's view. Herink paused only briefly at the edge of the field, remembering Borgan's parting warning, and plunged in after them.

***

"He followed us in," Jacen said, not sure if he should be happy for his pursuer's stupidity, or frustrated at their inability to loose this dreadful gang. "Now let's see what this piece of junk can do." Jacen wasn't a quarter the pilot his dad was, or a third the pilot his uncle was, or even half the pilot his sister was, but hey, those were the three best pilots he knew, and after them, he was pretty darn good.

The Planet Hopper he had stolen was a bulbous craft to say the least. It was built for no more than a 24-hour flight through normal space. It had two bedrooms, a refresher unit, a lounge, and a cockpit. There was a small engineering department that was more like a cramped crawl space, but since it was never away from the surface for long and was never more than 12 hours from any port, it hadn't been designed for in-flight repairs. What Jacen was missing the most right now was the fact that this ship had no weapons to speak of.

Jacen turned into the flight of the asteroids and tried to match speeds with them so he would be flying into as little disturbance as possible. As he flew he scanned the controls in front of him. He was very thankful there were shields. He figured that any ship that had to fly near an asteroid field, whether they flew through a tunnel or not, needed a little debris protection. There was a tractor beam, an automated pilot, and a good sensor array. Jacen soon found that the controls were sluggish compared to the fighters he was used to flying.

The ship suddenly rocked, and Ariela let out a startled yip. "Jacen," she scolded as she looked for the small asteroid that had hit them, "watch it."

Jacen checked is readings. "That wasn't an asteroid, dear. We just got shot. Time for a few evasive maneuvers." Jacen sent the ship downward and barrel-rolled away from the large rock that had been beneath him. As Jacen pulled the maneuver, he saw two more bolts of energy fly over top of him and crash into a large asteroid.

Herink followed suit and made the move more easily, halving the distance between the two ships. Jacen saw this and realized that textbook moves could easily be mimicked and if the ship got any closer, the pilot would be able to pop the cockpit and hit them with a blaster. Jacen turned the ship into a hard right turn, paused briefly at 90 degrees, and then cut even harder, turning all the way around and having to dip under another asteroid halfway through the turn. Herink made the turn as well, but when Jacen had paused after half of it, he assumed that the Jedi was going to simply make a run for the outside of the belt. Herink had punched his throttle to cut Jacen off, only to find that the skillful pilot had completed the 180 and was now flying into the flowing rocks. Herink slowed down and completed the turn himself, but now Jacen had regained his original lead and maybe placed a few more rocks between the two ships.

It was all Jacen could do now to try and avoid the oncoming rocks and didn't have time for any fancy maneuvers to put distance between the ships. Herink soon got his ship behind the Planet Hopper again and began firing methodically. Jacen saw the shots fly past him before he felt the first one hit. The ship rocked hard as one, two, and then three shots hit home. The first two were glancing blows, but the third one hit them square in the backside. Jacen thought he heard an explosion from the ship, but he couldn't see anything on the systems check.

"Ariela," he said, drawing her away from flinching every time an asteroid came close, "do you know how to maintain shield strength?" She shook her head. "Look right here," he said and tapped on the shield indicator, which showed that the rear shields were well past red. Jacen quickly returned his free hand to the controls as a spinning asteroid came a little too close. Jacen hugged it, using it as a shield to change directions slightly with out his follower seeing him. "You can see on the picture that there are six different shield areas: top, bottom, front, back, right, and left," He paused as he concentrated on jumping up a few levels in the flow pattern of the deadly rocks. "Use these controls," he tapped another section of the panel, " to try and keep only the sections of the shield that are between us and him powered." Jacen looked at the sensor and saw that his laser happy buddy hadn't yet made the move up. "For example right now he is back and below us so try and focus all of the shield strength into those two areas."

Ariela nodded. "But what if an asteroid hits us in the front?"

Jacen shook his head as yanked the controls to the side, just avoiding answering Ariela's question with a real life answer. "Honey, we don't have the power luxury to repel both, and his fire power is aimed at us, while the asteroids are purely random. I like my chances of avoiding them better than avoiding beam weapons that travel at near the speed of light."

Ariela nodded and looking at the sensors, she saw that Herink was once again directly behind them. She adjusted the shields accordingly. The ship rocked twice more as two more shots found their mark. The next two shots sailed past the Planet Hopper and exploded against a small asteroid directly in front of them. The rock blew apart and Jacen flew right through it, small rocks raining down against the cockpit view screen like hail on a tin roof.

Jacen paused briefly, as he smelled the air. "Do you smell smoke?" Ariela sniffed the air and nodded. "Fires are not good in space," Jacen muttered. Looking at the temperature readings on the panel he saw that there was indeed a fire in the engineering section around the main reactor. Jacen pressed another button and prayed that the automatic extinguisher worked. Two more shots hit them and Jacen found that he had suddenly lost the majority of his mobility. "No!" Jacen screamed at the now nearly useless controls.

Jacen looked down at the panels and saw only two things operational: the life support and the tractor beam. No shields. No forward propulsion. Very little mobility. Jacen closed his eyes and filled himself with the Force. He felt a very large asteroid almost three kilometers wide straight ahead. Jacen could also sense that on the opposite side of the asteroid there was an enormous lump half the size of the huge rock. The large asteroid was rotating slowly and flying in formation with another large asteroid a half a kilometer below it. Jacen aimed for the gap and hovered his hand over the tractor beam controls.

Herink's sensors told him that Jacen's ship was now totally defenseless, and he moved in for the kill. The uncoordinated craft limped about in front of him and Herink couldn't get a decent bead on it, but he stayed with it as the ship moved between two very large asteroids flying parallel to each other.

As Jacen entered the gap he locked the tractor beam onto the upper asteroid and pulled the ship into a steep climb around the curvature of the massive boulder, praying that the momentum of the ship was enough to rotate the rock. As the ship slowed down during the transfer of momentum, Jacen pulled even harder with the Force, forcing the big rock to come around, and it did.

Herink saw the ship ahead of him come to a dead stop, he locked onto the rear of the wounded craft, and fired. He enjoyed the sight as the back of the ship exploded in a subdued fireball. Herink was so proud of himself, he didn't notice that the large asteroid above him was turning. The lump had rotated all the way around the top and was now moving towards the gap. Herink's black ship coasted into the gap seconds before the lump rotated in. The small distance between the asteroids was not big enough hold the lump, and the black ship's proximity sensors went crazy as the two asteroids rolled together like meshing gears. Herink's laugh died in his throat as he and the ship around him had their atoms spread across the cosmos.

Jacen had felt the shot coming through the Force, but there was little he could do. The ship rocked and convulsed violently when it hit home. The entire rear of the ship was torn from the front half, and the explosion sent the remaining section hurtling toward the asteroid that Jacen had been skimming. The huge rock was still spinning gently and that was a major factor in absorbing the shock as the front half of the ship hit the asteroid tangentially. The ship rocked hard as it skipped once, twice, and then skidded to a halt, the nose of the ship imbedded into soft section of the rock.

It was when they were finally stopped that Jacen heard the noise. It wasn't a common noise that you heard every day, and if you were lucky, you could go through life without ever hearing it. It was the most deadly sound in space. A very sharp, hissing sound. "We're loosing air!" Jacen said and unstrapped himself from his chair, and found, to his utter lack of surprise, that there was no gravity. He propelled himself with the Force through the open cockpit door to find that there were no lights in the rest of the ship. The cockpit lights ran off a separate battery in the front of the ship for this very reason. Jacen guided himself through the ship, homing in on the dreadful sound. Jacen moved as quickly as he could, pushing off open doorways until he came to the door to the engineering section. When the ship had been hit the last time, it had breached the engineering section and this door had closed automatically, but before it was able to seal itself completely, the power had been cut. The crack in the door was not visible to the eye, but Jacen could definitely feel the air current flowing out. There was no handle on the door for Jacen to push on, so he put his hands flat against the door and pushed inward and sideways, willing the door closed. He felt it slip a little, and the hissing subdued somewhat. With a tremendous heave, he felt the door click and the hissing stopped all together. How much air had been lost though? Without the life support operational, there would be no way to replace the lost oxygen.

Jacen drifted himself back through the darkness to the cockpit where he found Ariela struggling with her weightlessness. It was probable that she had never experienced the unique phenomenon before, and it produced a bit of vertigo when someone felt it for the first time. She turned to Jacen when he entered. Jacen tried to sound upbeat. "Well I got that taken care of. Just a little leak. It's fixed now."

"Jacen, what are we going to do now?" she asked, trying to sound strong.

"I'll tell you exactly what we're going to do now, honey. I'm going to send out a distress signal. Then a rescue team from Estassia is going to come and get us. They are going to take us back to Rencrin. They're going to drop us off right next to my ship which is parked in the local space port, and we are going to go to Coruscant together, where you can meet my family and friends."

"And in the meantime, before they come and get us?" The look in Ariela's eyes told him that only the truth would be accepted.

"I'm afraid it's going to get a little cold and a little stuffy. How cold and stuffy, I really don't know, but it won't exactly be comfortable."

Ariela nodded, accepting his answer. "First we have to rig up the distress signal. Now the best way to stay warm is to take your mind off it and keep busy, so why don't you help me." Ariela looked at him and nodded mutely. "First thing we have to do is find out where the power to the communications section is located so we can splice it to the battery that is running the lights." Jacen looked intently at the control panel, knowing that he would have to remove it. There were eight fasten screws holing the panel down, one at each corner and one in the middle of each side. "What I wouldn't give for a hydro-spanner right now," Jacen said to Ariela, but as he spoke, Ariela watched all eight of the screws rotate on their own and come out of their sockets. Ariela watched Jacen concentrate slightly during the trick and then turn away from Ariela when he was finished. He looked at the eight bolts floating in the zero gravity and shrugged his shoulders in feigned ignorance. "I guess the screws need gravity to keep them down."

Ariela frowned at Jacen's poor attempt at humor, but the frown didn't last long, as the good mood that Jacen was forcing on the situation was contagious. "Let me help you with that," she said, and together they maneuvered the clumsy panel out of the way.

"Thanks," Jacen said, "it was pretty heavy." Ariela elbowed him but laughed anyway. Jacen manually traced the wire from the cockpit lights down to a small battery tucked away in a corner of the small compartment beneath the control panel. Next he traced the wire from the communications switch to the relay through the main power source. Jacen looked briefly for something to cut the wire and plucked one of the screws that were still floating around out of the air. He placed the sharp threads against the wire and rubbed hard. After a few passes he cut the wire, and within a minute or two, he had the communications circuit running through the auxiliary battery.

Jacen leaned back out from the lower compartment and pulled the control panel back down from the spot where it had been floating. Jacen was happy to see that the communications light was now operational. Jacen recorded a very brief message, stating the urgency of their situation but not mentioning their names, just in case. Jacen encoded the message inside the locator beacon, looped the two together, and started playing them.

"How long do you think it will take before someone responds to them?" Ariela asked when Jacen leaned back, telling her that he was done.

"Oh, I don't know. I'd guess about one hour tops," he lied. "I want to cut the cockpit lights so there isn't any excess drain on the battery, okay?" Ariela nodded, but still gasped slightly as they were plunged into total darkness by the flip of a switch. "Let's see if we can find a glow rod in the bedroom."

The two of them floated gently through the narrow hallways into the bedroom. Ariela couldn't see a thing and was of little use in looking, but Jacen soon found two glow rods. Jacen had been hoping to find some old electric lights. They at least produced some heat. They both floated over to the lounge. The lounge consisted of two chairs and two couches around a medium sized table, all of which were now floating in the air. Jacen and Ariela tried to sit in the chairs, with little success. They floated about for a few minutes before Ariela broke the silence. "What is your family like?"

"It's funny you should ask," Jacen said, although he really couldn't see too much humor in the question once he thought about it. "When it comes down to galactic history over the past 30 years, my parents and uncle basically ran the show." Jacen went into a detailed explanation of how the three of them had met and how they had defeated the Death Star at Yavin. Jacen spared few details, knowing that time was something they had a lot of. Every time he had a chance to exaggerate the details for the sake of humor, he did so.

Jacen had been talking for about forty minutes when Ariela interrupted him. "J-J-Jacen, I'm c-cold." Jacen had so thoroughly involved himself in his story telling that he had lost track of everything else. When he looked for Ariela he saw that she was no longer holding onto her glow rod and was simply floating aimlessly about the room, bumping into walls and furniture.

Jacen had been using a slight Jedi trance to slow his breathing, knowing that it was his responsibility to try and conserve the air. Now that he exhaled out of his trance he saw that he could see his breath clearly. It must be close to 30 degrees in here, he thought. "Ariela, dear, we have to see if we can find you a blanket."

Jacen floated over to her and she grabbed out for him. "J-Jacen you're s-so warm." Jacen was thinking the opposite as her icy fingers clamped around his arm. She brought her arms around his chest and hugged him fiercely, trying to feel his inner warmth.

It wasn't fair, Jacen thought. What gives me the right to stay warm while she freezes to death? Jacen knew though, that it would be foolish to stop using the Force to keep himself warm, just to be fair. "Give me your hands," he said gently, pulling her arms from around him. He held her hands in his and concentrated on sending his warmth into her. He could sense the tingling sensation through her body as the warmth spread into her limbs. "Is that better?" She nodded her head, not opening her mouth, too afraid to let any of the coveted heat out. "Good. I'm going to find you a blanket, okay?" Ariela nodded again, and Jacen left.

Jacen had seen several blankets in the room when they had looked for the glow rods, and he brought two of them back with him and a sleeping bag. When he came back to Ariela, she was shivering just as bad as before. He flew up next to her and wrapped one of the blankets around her. "C-can we b-build a f-fire?"

Jacen shook his head slowly, tears welling up in his eyes. This was the oxygen debt taking effect on her brain. She couldn't think clearly. "No, dear. The fire will eat up the oxygen. We can't afford that." Jacen hugged her, trying to ward off the cold.

"Why are y-you s-so warm?"

Jacen couldn't look her in the face as the tears came down his face. How could he tell her that someone had chosen at the beginning of time that he was to be given this special gift so that he could be warm while she had to suffer, even though she never did anything wrong to deserve it? This was the first time in Jacen's life that he thought of the Force strength he had as a burden. As foolish as the notion was, Jacen wished that they could both be cold and die together. Luke had told him that there would be several times in his life when he would wish that he never had his Force potential. This was the first. "I have the Force," Jacen said, managing to keep his voice from cracking.

"Can you give me some?"

Jacen's heart broke in two, and he hugged her as tight as he could. Life was simply not fair. How could he say no? Jacen began to feel the lack of oxygen in his system, and knew he was going to have to go into a trance soon in order to stay alive. How would he be able to keep Ariela warm then? Jacen pulled out of the hug a little and looked deep into Ariela's deep blue eyes. Through the frost of her constant breathing, Jacen thought they looked like frozen blue water droplets from Hoth. "Do I have permission?" he asked solemnly. Ariela nodded her head. Jacen bent his face down to hers and their lips locked in a kiss deeper than either of them had ever felt before. Jacen literally stole her breath away as they joined through the Force. Their breathing became almost nonexistent as their pulses slowed down to a dozen beats per minute. Jacen filled her with the Force, as he had never used it before. The kiss lasted over 30 minutes.

Jacen slowly released his hold on her lips and was happy to see that they were no longer the color of her eyes. He could feel her warmth all the way through to her toes. Her trance was not totally comatose and he could see slight puffs of frost from her nostrils every 20 seconds. He could also feel that the heat he had imputed into her was not stable and it was fading even now. Jacen didn't know how he could sustain a second person trance in these extreme conditions.

Jacen looked around the room and laid eyes on the sleeping bag he had brought with him. He gently beckoned it to him with the Force, not daring to leave Ariela alone for even a second. "Jacen," Ariela said, as she began to slip out of the trance, "not alone in the sleeping bag. Never alone. You have complete and absolute permission. We will survive, together, always, together." Jacen silenced her with another kiss, and he unzipped the sleeping bag for the two of them. He needed to create a total union.

****

Chapter 9

"Ship's log twenty-one-hundred hours. We are approaching the derelict spacecraft that has been sending a distress signal for the past four hours. The signal was weak and was reflected off several asteroids before it left the belt and was received back on Estassia. It took over three hours to track down the source, but it appears to be coming from a heavily damaged spaceship that is imbedded in a particularly large asteroid. With the use of a heavy tractor beam we have removed the asteroid from the belt and are proceeding to enter the ship. Preliminary scans indicated no life forms and only very small power fluctuations that appear to be coming from the back up battery that is powering the distress signal. Scans also indicate an inside temperature of minus 20 degrees and no oxygen. There is, however, positive pressure inside the craft. The mission status has been changed from 'rescue' to 'recovery.'"

The small mating pod left the large rescue vessel and crept slowly toward the asteroid. The crew consisted of three men. "Bring her in gently Stevens, I don't want you dislodging this thing from its final resting place so we have to go chasing it all over the sector."

"Yes, sir," Stevens said, the 'sir' being the only part of his reply that sounded even remotely respectful.

Jarret, looked at the pilot, surprised he had even gotten the 'sir' out of him. Jarret looked over his shoulder at the third member of the group, Kern, and shrugged. These three men had been on numerous missions together, most of them turning out just like this one. You always had these kids that dared themselves to try and fly through the boulder belt without using the tunnel and 9 times out of 10, this is how they ended up. The three men still felt remorse, but it was only because of their moral nature and not out of any special dispensation toward the deceased. And while they were always serious during the 'recovery,' they tried to lighten the mood around the mission as much as possible.

"I can't seem to find the port, sir," Steven's said as he had circled the small lump on the side of the asteroid twice now.

"What about that door?" Kern said from the back seat, pointing through the forward view.

"That was not originally a door to the outside," Steven's said upon closer examination. "That looks like it was the door down to the control room, or engineering, or what ever part of this ship got blown off. It looks kind of like a Planet Hopper. That door sealed itself automatically when the breach occurred."

"That's some breach," Jarret said. "The whole back of the ship was blown off."

"That bugs me," Steven's said as he pulled in closer to the exposed innards of the ship. "How do you blow up half a ship while leaving the other half intact?" Stevens flashed the light of the rescue pod across the charred remains of the ship. "There," he said, "see that charred tank with the hole in the bottom? That's the fuel storage container. In a normal explosion that thing would have been blown to bits. As it is, it is only charred with a slight hole in the bottom. They got lucky. They must have been hit twice, once draining the tank, and the second time taking out the reactor. With out any fuel to ignite on the second collision, the asteroid just took off the back off the ship without totally destroying the ship."

"Yea," Kern agreed sarcastically, "really lucky for them. Instead of dying in a split second from an unseen asteroid, they get hit twice and then die of asphyxiation while they freeze to death."

"You guys are assuming that they got hit by an asteroid," Jarret piped in. "If you look at the carbon scoring on the side of the ship, it doesn't look too much like an asteroid to me." The others pondered this for a while. "Anyway, that door looks like our only way in, short of making a new door. Stevens, do you think that you can get a solid seal around that door?"

"I don't know. I think so."

"What do you mean, 'I think so?' I don't want the inside of that ship venting into space."

"I'm sorry, sir. I WILL get a solid seal around that door."

"That's better. If we can restore some heat and air to the inside we'll be able to take our suits off." Jarret turned to Kern. "What kind of systems do we have to work with over there?"

"Everything's down except for that distress signal, and it's fading fast."

"Okay, I want you to restore the lights and life support as fast as you can. Please do not restore the artificial gravity if you can help it. I don't want bodies falling from high places. Let's try and show a little respect for the dead."

Stevens brought the pod right up next to the wounded ship and extended the airlock sleeve. "Attempting a pressure seal," Stevens said. "Surface is too rough. Pressure seal has failed."

"Take your time, Stevens. If whoever is in there has survived this long in those conditions, a few more seconds won't hurt them."

Stevens nodded. "Attempting magnetic seal. Again surface is too rough and scarred to secure. Magnetic seal has failed. Attempting fusion seal." Stevens waited as the fusion material worked its way around the door. "Welding complete. Testing for pressure stability. Seal is secure." Stevens turned away from his controls. "Ready when you are."

The three men were already dressed in their environment suits and merely had to attach oxygen tanks to their backs and put on their helmets. Stevens was the first one through the sleeve. He paused while he tried to locate the manual override that would open the door. Once found, he mentally steeled himself for what he was about to see and opened the door.

It was incredibly dark and Stevens activated his glow lamp to shed some light into the ghost ship. He walked through the door and looked briefly around, his magnetic boots securing him to the floor. "Yep, this is what is left of what used to be a Planet Hopper. Fairly new design too. The cockpit will be the first door on your left, Kern."

"Thanks," the engineer responded. Kern was the last one in line and was pulling a power cord that was connected back in the pod to the power supply. While Kern went into the cockpit, Jarret and Stevens ventured into the bedroom.

"Four bunk beds," Stevens observed for the record, "none of them made." He opened some of the drawers. "It appears that some blankets are missing, but I can't be sure. I don't know exactly how these new Planet Hoppers are equipped, and if it is a privately owned one, they could have anything on board."

"Let's move into the lounge area," Jarret suggested, obviously seeing nothing in the bedroom.

Stevens led the way into the lounge and walked right into a pair of black pants. Stevens pulled them out of the air and looked at them briefly. "It appears that whoever is on this ship decided to go out with a bang." Jarret frowned at the young pilot severely. "Although I would think that they would be able to stay warmer if they had kept them on."

Jarret yanked the pants out of Stevens' grasp. "I thought you were smarter than that," the captain of the group said as he rolled the thin material between his gloved thumb and forefinger. "This material wouldn't do squat against the likes of 20 below. Besides, the best way to conduct heat between two people is skin to skin."

Stevens turned away from Jarret and sprayed the rest of the room with light. The beam of light cast eerie shadows amongst all the floating furniture and clothes. "I count two chairs, two couches, one small table, several articles of clothing, some definitely feminine, two blankets, and one sleeping bag," Stevens paused as he mentioned this last article. "I think I see some hair coming out of the sleeping bag, sir." Stevens added, turning suddenly professional now that they had found the reason for their presence.

"Give me readings on their status," Jarret order calmly.

Stevens tossed his glow lamp to Jarret, whipped out his hand held scanner, and approached the sleeping bag all in a smooth, practiced motion. "There are two people inside, sir, one male, one female. They appear to be somewhere in their mid twenties, standard years." Stevens looked intently at his hand-held instrument, making sure he was reading it correctly. "Sir, I am recording life signs here."

"What!"

"Sir, I am recording a respiratory rate and a heart beat."

"How many?"

"Unknown sir, they are both too faint to tell if they are solitary or in unison."

"How are they breathing? There is no air in this blasted ship."

Just then, the lights flickered on. "Correction, sir," Kern said as he walked in, "there is an oxygen content in the air of one point two seven percent and rising."

"Kern," Jarret ordered, "we have potentially two survivors. I need heat and air and I need it now!"

Kern ran back into the pod and returned with two thermal blankets and an oxygen tank with two masks. Jarret was over by Stevens and the sleeping bag. "What kind of rates are you talking about?"

"I'd say the respiratory rate is about once every three minutes and the heart rate is maybe twice a minute, but like I said they are incredibly faint." Stevens made a move to remove the bodies from the sleeping bag, but Jarret stopped him.

"Leave them in there. I don't want to disturb whatever coma they have apparently induced upon themselves."

Kern came up to them with the blankets and masks. Stevens and Jarret carefully secured the masks around the couple's faces while Kern wrapped the thermal blankets around the outside of the sleeping bag. After the provisions were in place the three of them stood back and waited. After about 90 seconds the male inhaled almost imperceptibly. Thirty seconds later he did it again and again ten seconds later.

"Sir, this is incredible," Stevens said, "his pulse is stabilizing incredibly fast. His core temperature is actually rising faster than the thermal blanket!" They watched for a few more minutes while the coma victim came back to life. Soon he was breathing normally with a safe, stable heart rate.

"Kern," Jarret said, "get on the horn with the main ship. Tell them to have a bacta tank ready. This boy is going to have some serious frostbite."

Kern turned to go and then paused, turning back to the sleeping bag. "What about his girlfriend?" The three of them stared at what had once been a very beautiful face. Her skin was as white as snow and they all new it was brittle to the touch. There were small ice follicles decerating her closed eyelashes. Her lips were a ghastly blue and her mouth hung slightly open inside the oxygen mask. She was facing her companion who was breathing steadily with much of the color returning to his face. She hadn't breathed now for over five minutes, and likely, much longer than that.

Jarret turned to Stevens. "All I'm getting is the new strong signal, sir. The old weak one is gone. I'm afraid that it was him all along."

Jarret turned to Kern. "Tell them that we have one survivor and one who didn't make it."

***

The large room became deathly still when Jacen walked in. The Master was sitting at a large table with a few small electrical devices surrounding him. He was tinkering away, and although he saw Jacen come in, had even been told moments ago that Jacen had entered the complex through the front door and that no one had seemed to be able to get close to him, much less stop him, he didn't look up to regard the young man who was now standing fifteen meters away. Borgan was standing beside his much smaller father looking as stone cold and emotionless as ever. The walls of the long narrow room were filled with some of the most beautiful and precious jewelry and art pieces that Jacen had ever laid his eyes on. On several of the shelves closer to the table at the far end of the room, Jacen could see numerous little electronic gizmos that were displayed with almost as much care as the invaluable art pieces preceding them. Among those last shelves lay his two lightsabers.

Jacen steeled himself against the two occupants in the room and stood there straight and tall, staring right past Borgan and boring a hole in the Master's head as it stayed down looking at the table. The old man seemed quite content to let Jacen stand there all day, but he was getting the feeling that, given the chance, Jacen would stand there all year.

"Please come in," the mechanical craftsman said, still without looking up. Jacen didn't move a muscle. The Master looked up, tiring of this game and Jacen's stone cold resolution. "Oh, I see that you are already in. Please, have a seat," he gestured to the vast room where the only chair was already taken by himself. "Make yourself comfortable." Jacen didn't breath. "You seem a little ill at ease, my young man." The Master knew exactly what had happened. He had played with the idea of sending someone to Jacen's bacta tank to finish the job Herink had started, as the young Jedi had stayed in the healing salve for over three days straight, but security around the medical facilities on Estassia was tight. Besides, the Master was patient and knew this day would come. "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am to hear about your loss. She was a lovely girl, and so full of life-"

"Power," Jacen interupted with a voice like ice. "Knowledge is power. Fear is power. Isn't that right? Well then know this: fear me." The Master opened his mouth to make some retort, but Jacen shut it with a snap of his fingers before the disillusioned old man could utter a sound. "It is my turn to speak now. I can't help it if you wasted your time spewing childish attempts at derogatory sarcasm." Borgan saw that Jacen was inflicting something on his master and father and made a tentative charge toward the young man. "Please," Jacen said as he sent the huge man hurtling back into the durasteel wall before he even took two steps. The big man slumped to the floor, leaving a large indentation in the wall behind him. "We've played that game before, and your not very good at it."

Jacen turned back to the Master who was a little awestruck at Jacen's emphatic display. "Power," Jacen continued, totally in control of the situation, "is knowledge. Power is fear. Is that it? I don't think so. You think that through fear you control lives and that control gives you power. You kill. You maim. You destroy. You instill fear. You think that it gives you power. You are so wrong. I am strong. You are strong. But do we really have power? Four days ago I held Ariela's freezing, suffocating body in my arms. I thought I was powerful, but I could not keep her alive. At any point I could have withheld heat or not decelerated her breathing. She would have died in less than five minutes. Did that make me powerful? If she feared that I could let her die at any time would that have given me power over her? Are you saying that I can have power through passive means? Life is fragile; anyone can threaten or destroy its existence. It doesn't take a man who can shoot electricity out of his fingers or someone who can levitate rocks to destroy human life. True power comes from the ability to create life - the ability to understand why it is so important. I tried to save her life with my feeble powers but I couldn't even sustain the simplest of activities in her such as breathing or circulation, something that you and I do with out thinking."

Jacen beckoned to a shelf near him and an intricately carved crystal vase floated into his hands. "This is beautiful. Simply looking at this sculpture with its intricate floral design intertwining all the way around the vase is mesmerizing. You put this on a table in your home to admire it. A child just old enough to crawl bumps into the leg of the table, and what happens?" Jacen dropped the vase and it shattered into a thousand pieces. "That child must have been so powerful, right? The power wasn't in the destruction. It wasn't in the fact that the parents now fear for the safety of all their other breakable valuables when the child is near. The power was in the creation of the vase. The artist holds the power. He gave us the opportunity to join in the power by observing and appreciating the wonderful creation he had made. But people like you go and destroy these beautiful creations," Jacen made an all encompassing gesture at the shelves in the room, "by hoarding them to yourself.

"You go out into the world and find a beautiful young girl. She is glowing with life and potential, so you kill her parents and steal her for yourself, snuffing out the flame of life that burns so bright inside her. At least you tried to snuff it out, but it burns too brightly. Every time someone comes around and tries to fan the flame, you remove them. Then someone comes along, and you can't remove him. It becomes apparent that her flame is going to burn brightly regardless of your hostile intentions. So what do you do? You snuff out the flame by destroying the candle. I was there as the flame flickered its last, quivering delicately in the fading heat and air, remaining beautiful to the end. That wasn't power. That was the childish, adolescent behavior of some stuck up kid who decides that if it is beautiful and he can't have it, then no one can."

Jacen paused and saw his lightsabers sitting on the shelf near the table where the Master sat. Jacen walked forward slowly, each step measured and sure. Borgan was standing again and watching Jacen apprehensively, wanting nothing to do with the dangerous young man. Jacen reached onto the shelf to take his weapons. As Jacen's hands started to close on the handles, they where yanked off the shelf by an unseen force. Jacen turned slowly to the Master who was holding the lightsabers, one in each hand and waving them mischievously. To Jacen the man looked like an immature kid playing with a baby and a piece of candy tied to a string, always pulling it away when the baby got too close. "You want these, don't you."

The lightsabers were ripped from the old man's hands so violently that the Master was thrown forward into the edge of the table. The two weapons floated gently over to Jacen and went directly to the loops on his belt. "I don't believe that these belong to you." Jacen took a few more steps forward until he was standing two meters in front of the table. "I was thinking about what you said to me, about me being dependent on the Force, while you are dependent on no one but yourself. Frankly I think being dependent on the all powerful life source of the universe is a little more reassuring than depending on the electronic know how of an aging man.

"You know I was going to ignore you. I was going to fly away from this planet with or without Ariela and tell my mother that I thought this planet had a lot of potential for a member of the New Republic but they have two problems. They might be a little hesitant to accept aliens into their culture and society, and they have a deeply rooted organized crime system running through the major continent. What kind of scout would I be if I did nothing about this when I had the chance? I would be like a physician who was asked to set a broken bone and during analysis of the patient, found that he also had a deadly disease that would kill him in a few days. If the physician simply patched the bone and ignored the disease, he would be lynched for malpractice."

"Revenge does not become a Jedi."

"You're absolutely right, but justice does. Do you know that I haven't used lethal force against you once? People have died, but I was never the instigator. Even when I destroyed the ship that was chasing us, I wasn't attacking the pilot, but rather the ship that kept spewing fire at us. But now that I've had time to think about it, what kind of protector of the peace would I be if I simply allowed you to continue your reign of terror on the land, giving you the opportunity to ruin more lives like you ruined Ariela's."

Borgan and the Master both realized that they were being threatened by this young man who stood before them, but they had no way to counter him until he made his move. So they were quite surprised when Jacen simply turned his back to them and began walking away. When he was ten steps distant, the Master could stand it no longer. "So what do you plan to do?"

Jacen stopped and paused briefly before turning around. "You told me that you were completely self sufficient. Well I got to thinking, and I don't know too many people, none in fact, who can power a tractor beam or create electronic disturbances with their own muscles. That means that Mr. Independent has a secret power source that he doesn't want anyone to know about. I know of only one type of cheap, portable, small, clean power source. Unfortunately, if anything happens to it, it can become extremely unstable."

Jacen turned to continue walking. The Master thought he knew where Jacen was going with this, but he called out to him anyway. "So?"

Jacen had taken one more step and turned back to face him. "Do you know how a fusion bomb works?" The Master nodded mutely, the foul taste of bile rising in his throat. "So do I." Jacen turned to continue walking as the Master clutched his chest. "Knowledge IS power."

"You couldn't!"

"I did," Jacen responded coolly, and then paused as something on the shelf caught his eye. "I don't think this belongs to you either," he said as he pocketed the diamond necklace that had started everything. Jacen walked calmly out of the room, while the Master was undergoing a minor heart attack.

"What is it, Father?" Borgan asked as the Master was turning as white as a ghost.

"He knows," he muttered. "He knows." The old man looked up at his enormous son. "Call Dr. Wullim. He knows."

***

As Jacen walked out of the complex, the guards didn't even bother attempting an attack. "I would leave if I were you," he said to a few of the guards he passed. None of them listened. Jacen walked out of the same door he had walked in, and his corporeal form shifted slightly as he passed through the strong energy shield surrounding the base. He made his way up the steep valley side until he was perched atop the grav-rail, looking down on the warehouse from a safe distance. Jacen looked up to the sky. "Forgive me." Then he snapped his fingers.

***

Inside one of the warehouse's medical rooms, Dr. Wullim was removing a small, semi-transparent sphere from the Master's chest. Borgan could see that it had a few power cable sockets on the outside. When the doctor had removed the sphere, Borgan had seen that he had to first disconnect several small cables that ran throughout his father's body. "What is it?"

The Master's voice was much weaker now. "Cold fusion. The reaction is electronically controlled, and is maintained inside a magnetic containment field. We have to turn it off. If he knows how to alter the electrical controls, all he has to do is drop the magnetic containment field. . ."

"And then what?" Borgan asked as the Master reached for the power controls of the sphere.

***

From outside, Jacen watched as the warehouse glowed bright blue and then exploded. A uniform, spherical shock wave hit the energy shield around the building and the two energy waves fizzled into nothing. Jacen had made sure that the explosion wasn't too big, destroying only what needed to be destroyed. There were no after shocks, and the energy field had contained the explosion enough that it was spent quickly. A few seconds after the explosion, all that was left was a smoking pile of rubble.

***

"I . . ."

Jacen stood over the open grave with a very solemn look on his face.

"I . . . I . . ."

The sun was shinning brightly on Trinxon today, and only a few white clouds dotted the sky. The wind was nonexistent.

"I . . . I just . . ."

Jacen was standing in a local graveyard, that he had spent the better part of the day trying to locate. There was one grave stone near by. It had three names on it: Thorin Juwel, Marta Juwel, and Thorin Juwel Jr. Jacen thought it best if he buried Ariela with her family.

The cemetery owner was standing thirty meters away, watching Jacen from a safe distance. Jacen had come to the graveyard carrying the huge coffin all by himself. The coffin was made of fine wood and was built by the best wood craftsman on Estassia. When the owner of the cemetery had asked to see the body, he had offered a thousand credits to buy the necklace around Ariela's neck. The look Jacen had given him made the owner wonder if Jacen's brown eyes weren't actually red and if the green cloak he was wearing hid a red pointy tale. So he had followed Jacen carefully, keeping a good distance of at least fifteen meters, but when he watched Jacen dig a grave two meters by two meters by one meter with two glowing blue swords in a little less than two minutes, he doubled his observation distance.

"I . . . I really wanted to . . ."

Jacen fought against his inability to talk as he looked down at her. The color had been medically restored to Ariela's face and her hair had retained its glowing, blonde sheen. She was dressed in an identical black dress to the one he had first met her in, and she had the marvelous diamond necklace around her neck. He stared at the stunning piece of jewelry as it captured the sun's energy and used it to light up Ariela's face.

"I . . ." he started slowly. "I . . . You know it's funny that whenever we were together I was always joking around, making fun of you, and never taking our situation seriously. It was the same with you. But it was when we were apart that I really began to understand my feelings for you. It was when we were apart that I really missed you. It was when we were separated that I realized that I . . ." Jacen swallowed a lump, "And now that you're gone for good, I know it more than ever.

"Remember on the ship when you kept asking me how I was staying so warm?" Jacen tried to laugh, but it came out like a jagged exhales between sobs. "Well I just thought you'd like to know that it is a very beautiful, sunny, summer day, but I feel awful cold. I don't think all the Force strength in the universe could drive this chill from me.

"Remember our last minutes or hours together. I can't remember exactly how long it was. All I know is that it was too short - too short by decades. Well during our last time together, I was trying so hard to keep you alive, but you were the one who saved me. You didn't have a fraction of the resources I did but you strove to survive - refused to give up. If I had been alone on that ship, I wouldn't have felt the cold, and wouldn't have noticed the shortage of oxygen. I would have just put myself in a simple Jedi trance and died a few hours later, freezing to death. But you were there with me, not only reminding me how fragile life is, but how important it is. I wasn't strong enough to carry you, but you carried me, and I thank you for that.

"I remember your last words and always will, 'We will survive, together, always, together.' You were right. Even though I'm standing here and your body is lying down there, we're still together, you and I. I've heard people say that when they loose a loved one they feel a void. Like somehow they are missing something. I know what they mean, but they have to look deeper. They feel empty in their five senses, but that's not the most important part. Oh, don't doubt that I wouldn't give anything to hear your sweet voice or smell the breeze through your lovely hair or to see that sparkle in your deep blue eyes or to feel the touch of your soft skin or to taste your precious kisses, but those feelings pale next to the way you affect my sixth sense - my heart. There you will survive, always.

"It's funny, I'm probably the strongest warrior in this entire system, and here I am, tears running down my face like I'm on Calamari during the rainy season.

"We Jedi have this saying that we grow stronger in death. Honestly, I just think it's something we can throw at our enemies, right before they kill us so they'll think twice. I've never seen it work. But now I know that there is truth in that statement, no matter how it hurts to realize it. When you died in my arms, the Force became ten times stronger by adding your life spirit to the pool.

"You know my mother's going to hate you. Every time I meet a girl from here on out, I'm going to place them next to your standard, and they will all fall pathetically short.

"I keep expecting you to jump up and tell me that you were just kidding, and that you just wanted to see how I would react. We could dance in this beautiful day like we did the first time we met." Jacen finally managed a chuckle. "Maybe we could even fight afterwards." 

Jacen unbuckled his lightsabers and ignited them, their blue blades glittering in the sunlight. "You never really saw me use these, but they so define who I am and what I am. Not just a warrior or a fighter, but a Jedi, a protector." Jacen deactivated them and placed one back on his belt, turning the other over in his hand. "You gave me so much to remember you by, I just wanted to leave something with you." Jacen bent down and gently lowered the weapon onto her chest.

"You know, I've been standing here for about fifteen minutes now trying to say 'I love you,' but I can't seem to do it. You know that it's not because I don't, because I do. I guess it's just this curse we guys have. We can never express our true feelings. I always expected for you to say it first, and then I could simply respond to it. I guess that won't happen now." Jacen hung his head with a feeling of inadequacy.

Around his feet, the grass began to sway, as a slight breeze picked up. Jacen felt his brown hair rustle as the wind caressed his tear stained cheeks. He lifted his head up, and the leaves on the trees around him sang a sweet song of pure harmony. A large smile spread across Jacen's lips. "I love you too, Ariela."

   [1]: mailto:Dpontier@hotmail.com
   [2]: http://www.geocities.com/piqsid/stories.html



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